


Unsettled

by mrs_d



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Fake Marriage, M/M, Mission Fic, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:14:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 35,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23249044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_d/pseuds/mrs_d
Summary: After the fallout from the Accords, Steve and Sam try to settle into something resembling civilian life. To the people in their neighborhood, they're Rob and Marcus, a couple of married veterans who are always happy to lend a helping hand.But when a local teenager seems to develop superpowers, Steve and Sam find themselves drawn back into the world of spies and secrets, where enemies hide behind every corner and things are never quite what they seem.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Comments: 42
Kudos: 84





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A million years ago (I think it was 2016), someone asked me for a fic with SamSteve raising/mentoring a teenager with superpowers. Somehow, that idea evolved into this, a sprawling work that I've abandoned at least four times over the last four years. This past January, however, I got some traction on it, smoothed out the overly-complicated plot points, and now it's all-but finished. I've begun posting in part because everything is terrible right now, and we could all use some escapism, but also as a way of holding myself accountable. So, begging your patience, here are the first few chapters -- the rest will be up soon.

“So, tell me honestly: what do you think of this place?” Sam asked, as the welcome sign that announced the town’s four-digit population drew nearer.

Steve considered the question while he brought his hand back inside the car and slowly rolled the window up — their new-to-them sedan didn’t have power windows, and the crank was stiff; he had to be careful not to exert too much super strength, or he’d break it off completely. 

“It’s... quaint,” he said finally. 

Sam laughed under his breath. “You can admit you hate it, Steve, it’s okay.”

“I don’t hate it,” Steve protested, though he did make a face when he realized that, even with the window closed, he could still smell the corn in the fields that seemed to be encroaching on every backyard of every little house they passed. “It’s just different.”

“No New York, that’s for sure,” Sam agreed. “But I think you’ll like it, once we get settled.”

“We’re not settled yet?” Steve asked, a little confused. They’d been here for two weeks now — everything was unpacked, and Steve was starting to feel (almost) comfortable in their new house. 

(Their farmhouse. On a dirt road. Surrounded by cornfields. With zero light pollution and way too many stars.)

“We’re settled, we’re just not  _ settled _ settled,” Sam answered.

Steve supposed that made sense. This was, after all, one of only a few trips into town that wasn’t motivated by the need for gas or groceries. They were trying to flesh out their cover and get involved in the community by attending the last municipal council meeting before the summer recess. Afterwards, they were planning was to try the fare at the local pub (the only pub). It was the closest thing to a date that he and Sam had had in months. 

Still, Steve couldn’t resist a cheesy set-up when it landed in his lap. “Well, I guess that settles it, then,” he said with a grin. 

Sam sighed as he braked for a stop sign and flicked on the left blinker. He gave Steve a dry look as he turned his head to see if anything was coming. “Why do I keep you around?”

“Probably the sex,” Steve replied, without missing a beat. 

“Probably,” Sam agreed. “Lord knows you can’t keep house.” 

Steve laughed. “No, I certainly can’t. But I did wash the floor yesterday.”

“Which I appreciated,” Sam told him, and he glanced over again with a smile that faded fast. “You realize that’s what people are gonna ask about tonight, right?”

“Housework?” said Steve, confused again.

“In a manner of speaking,” Sam replied, parking between two pick-up trucks in the crowded community center lot. “We’re The Gays,” he added. 

It irked Steve to no end that he could hear Sam capitalize those letters. “I’m not—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sam interrupted with a shake of his head. “You’re with a man, and we’ve got a marriage license, so that’s what we are to them.”

Steve scowled, but he couldn’t disagree.

“And most people in a town like this, if you ask them, they’ll say it doesn’t matter to them what we do in the privacy of our own home,” Sam went on, as he turned off the engine. “But you can bet there’ll be a few questions, or some staring if nothing else.”

Steve nodded. He was used to stares by now, what with being a superhero celebrity and all, but this wouldn’t be the same. For one thing, he barely recognized himself in the mirror nowadays, with his dark hair, eyes, and beard. Sam looked different, too — he’d let his hair and beard grow out a bit and wore his black-rimmed glasses all the time now, not just for reading. 

“We don’t have to stay here, you know,” Steve said a moment later, taking Sam’s hand and squeezing it. “Nat can find us another safe house, or make us a new cover.”

“I know,” Sam replied, giving Steve a smile. “But let’s at least try this out before we make more work for her.” 

Steve huffed out a little laugh. “Fair enough.” 

He leaned over, brushed a kiss across Sam’s lips. Steve shivered a little when Sam kissed him back — being officially out and married was definitely an upside of their fake IDs. 

“You ready, Rob?” Sam asked when he pulled back.

“Ready as I’ll ever be, Marcus,” Steve said. He opened the car door, put his feet on the pavement, and went to work. 

* * *

The meeting was held in what was clearly a gymnasium most of the time. The municipal councillors had a table set up at the front with microphones, and rows of plastic folding chairs lined the shiny floor. The room was full; Steve and Sam squeezed into the end of one aisle, Steve answering people’s curious glances with the half-smile he’d gotten good at giving to the paparazzi in his former life. He made a conscious effort to tune out any whispers he overheard. 

Thankfully, the meeting wasn’t as terribly boring as Steve had feared it would be. The crowd was lively and engaged, asking insightful questions of the municipal councillors. The main concern tonight seemed to be the new recreation center, or rather, the lack of one. Fundraising efforts were stalling, and the community was asking the township for more money to make up the difference. After one impassioned plea by a young mother about her son’s dream to play hockey, Sam glanced over at Steve, and Steve nodded. They would donate; it wasn’t like they needed much of Steve’s back pay anymore, what with the low cost of living around here. 

As the meeting went on, and the councillors moved to other topics, Steve felt a strange tingle on the back of his neck. It took him a moment to place the sensation, but eventually he realized that it was the feeling of being watched. As surreptitiously as he could, he scanned the crowd and found the culprit: a girl — Steve would guess that she was about fifteen — at the far end of their row. There was a line of people between them, but her wide brown eyes were fixed on Steve. 

Steve nudged Sam’s thigh, very gently, and tilted his head in the girl’s direction. Sam turned, frowned. 

“Think she recognizes you?” he mumbled.

Steve shrugged. “Kids always do,” he whispered.

She was looking past him now, her eyes moving lower, scanning. Steve glanced down, saw a thin purple book upside down on the floor in the aisle. He bent forward, grabbed it, and held it up so the girl could see it, raising his eyebrows in a silent question.

The girl’s eyes lit up, her face broke into a smile, and she hustled around the chairs to come up on the other end of the row. Steve noticed as she did that there was a man following her, glancing worriedly around the room. 

“Thank you so much,” she told Steve when he handed her the book. Her voice was too loud; the councillor who had the floor faltered in his words.

“No problem,” Steve answered in a much lower tone. 

“Oh, sorry,” she whispered. “I dropped it when I was leaving practice,” she explained. “Worried somebody might’ve stole it.”

“Nope, I got it,” said Steve. He glanced awkwardly at the man who was hovering over her shoulder.

“Found it, Dad,” she added, turning to the man behind her.

“That’s great, kiddo,” said the man with a quick smile and a nod at Steve. “Let’s go, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed. She raised a hand to Steve in a half-wave. “Thanks again.”

Steve nodded, and they walked away. He turned his attention back to the meeting, only to be distracted again, this time by Sam, who was frowning, his jaw set tight. 

“Hey,” Steve whispered, taking one of Sam’s hands and loosening it out of a fist. “What’s up?”

Sam shook his head. “Tell you later,” he muttered through his teeth. 

“Okay,” Steve said, though he wasn’t happy about it. 

He watched Sam closely for the rest of the meeting, and even though his body language relaxed somewhat, the worry line between his eyebrows never really faded. Steve was relieved when the mayor adjourned the meeting, but his hopes for a quick escape were dashed when a group of townspeople gathered in the lobby, chattering noisily. 

Steve looked to Sam. “No way out but through,” he sighed, and Sam nodded. 

“Let’s do it.”

They dove into the fray. 

* * *

“So,” Sam said later, when they finally found themselves a secluded corner booth at the pub. “That kid.”

“Yeah,” Steve replied, leaning forward. “You looked pretty upset.”

“Not at her,” Sam clarified quickly, not that Steve had thought that. “There were these ladies beside me, talking about her and her family.”

Steve frowned. He’d been so focused on the kid herself that he hadn’t paid any attention to the whispers around the room. “What were they saying?”

Sam shook his head. “I didn’t catch all of it, but it wasn’t very nice. Said she belongs in a home.”

“A home?” Steve repeated.

“Yeah,” said Sam, lowering his voice until it was barely audible over the din of the restaurant. “They talked about her like she’s insane. Maybe even dangerous.”

“But she seemed nice enough,” Steve protested. “A little awkward, maybe—”

“Yeah, well, this one lady’s daughter teaches at the school, and she said the kid’s a demon.”

Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “A demon?”

Sam nodded, his mouth twisting bitterly. “I mean, on the one hand, people just say stuff like that about kids sometimes, especially kids that color, but on the other hand....” He trailed off, his gaze wandering around the room before coming back to Steve. “Something feels weird.”

Steve looked into Sam’s eyes — his were almost the same color now, he realized absently — and nodded. When Sam said something like that, he was usually right, and Steve had learned pretty early in their partnership to trust Sam’s instincts. 

“Okay. What do you think we should do?”

Sam sighed. “I don’t know. Probably nothing. You can’t trust the rumor mill in a town like this. God only knows what they’re saying about us, for instance,” he went on, laying his hand over Steve’s with a slight smile. “That was quite the interrogation after the meeting.”

Steve rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair a little. “Good thing we hashed out the details on how we met, huh?”

“Oh, hush. Ms. Letourneau found our conflicting stories adorable,” Sam countered, making Steve laugh. “And I think we made a good impression on the fire captain. What was his name again?”

“Snyder, I think,” Steve replied. “He certainly seemed interested in recruiting us.”

“A lot of my vets were volunteer firemen,” Sam pointed out. “It gave them structure, plus a community and a purpose.”

Steve gave Sam a shrewd look over his water glass. “Is that a hint?”

Sam chuckled. “Maybe. I might sign up, but you don’t have to. Unless you really want to, obviously.”

Steve thought about it as he looked around the pub at this town, this new community that they’d adopted. He would like to protect them, the same way he’d protect any civilians, but he didn’t think he’d be able to do it while pretending to be Joe Normal.

“I’ll leave that to you, I think,” he decided. “Besides,” he added, with a wry grin, “isn’t one of us supposed to be more butch than the other? I’ve heard that’s how this thing works.”

It was a reference to an off-hand comment they’d heard earlier — Mr. Letourneau had been surprised to learn that they were both ex-military, but he’d nodded when Steve told him he was also an artist. 

Sam laughed. “Something like that. To be honest, I’m kinda surprised that nobody asked about our— housework,” he redirected quickly, because the waitress had appeared at his elbow, bearing their plates of food. 

“Right,” said Steve. He waited until she’d put the entrees down, then thanked her, before he looking to Sam again. “Housework.” 

“Housework,” Sam affirmed, and Steve jumped when he felt the touch of Sam’s foot against his leg, slowly sliding up the back of his calf. It was startlingly arousing. “You up for that when we get home?”

Steve grinned. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll be up,” he said, and Sam rolled his eyes. “What?” Steve protested. “You walked right into that one.”

Sam just shook his head. “You’re lucky you’re pretty.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Over the next few weeks, Steve got — there was no other word for it — settled. 

He landed a part-time job at the grocery store to supplement his art shop on Etsy. He kept his cover as Rob MacPherson and took care not to lift more crates of apples than he thought the average retired soldier could. Nobody looked at him too closely, not even when they stopped him in the store to say hello. 

Meanwhile, Sam — AKA Marcus Rosewood, former US Marine — followed through with his plan to be a volunteer firefighter and gave his spare time to the most progressive church in town, serving hot meals once a month and taking up collection every Sunday. 

They kept their heads down, kept their private lives private, and slowly they eked out a life not unlike the one Steve might have pictured for himself one day: sharing a home with someone he loved, filling his time with art and work that felt good, even if it wasn’t what he was trained for. 

He couldn’t fool himself into thinking he was serving his country anymore, but his country also didn’t seem to want or need his service anymore. Nat kind of talked around it every time they were on the phone, but Steve was pretty sure that he and Sam could still technically be charged with treason, so the more anonymous they were, the better.

While it didn’t always feel right, he got used to it. Still, some days it was harder to stomach than others, like the day he watched Sam walk into a burning building. 

The little house beside the grocery store caught fire in late summer. It hadn’t rained in weeks, and high winds meant bad news for everyone in the vicinity. Steve was working; he and the other employees were evacuated, and Steve had been in the parking lot for less than ten seconds when he spotted Sam, in all his gear, listening intently while his captain — Steve couldn’t suppress a shameful pang of jealousy — gave them orders. 

Steve balled his hands up into fists, feeling the blunt edges of his fingernails dig into his palms, as Sam nodded and followed the crew inside. Every instinct was telling Steve to go, too; he could get the occupants out in seconds, could probably take the weight of a crumbling wall across his shoulders if he had to. With an effort, he reminded himself that he couldn’t, that this was why he left the firefighting to Sam. His number one objective was to stay off the radar, and nothing would attract more attention than Rob from the produce department holding up a collapsing house with his bare hands. 

Plus, Sam would give him so much shit. 

So he took a deep breath, reminded himself that Sam was more than capable, and, to his own surprise, accepted a cigarette when Janelle, his co-worker, offered him one. (Sam would probably give him shit for that, too.)

“He’ll be all right, Rob,” she said wisely, the tip of her own smoke glowing as she inhaled. Her dark eyes were compassionate on his. 

“I know,” Steve replied. “I’m just not used to—” He stopped himself and shook his head before he could reveal more than he meant to.

“Keeping the home fires burning?” Janelle finished with a sly grin. She shifted her cigarette to her other hand and tossed her red-tinted braids over one shoulder.

“Something like that,” Steve agreed. He took another drag and tried not to shudder — it’d been years, and cigarettes tasted a lot different than they used to.

“First time Darren went out, I nearly lost it,” Janelle went on, and it took Steve a second to remember that Janelle’s husband was a paramedic, probably one of the ones helping Sam right that moment. “But they know what they’re doing. He’ll be all right.”

Steve nodded. They smoked in silence for a moment. Steve watched the flashing lights of the pumper truck reflect in the glass windows of the grocery store, trying not to think about how many minutes had passed since he’d had Sam in his line of sight. 

“Must be different for you two,” Janelle said suddenly. “I mean, I’m the wife, I’m supposed to stay home. But you guys—”

“Aw, I’m sure Robbie’s a great little wife,” another voice chimed in. 

Steve tried not to sigh. He didn’t need to look to see that Don from the meat department had sauntered over, probably just to bug him, which seemed to be his new favorite pastime. 

Instead of answering, which would only lead to wanting to punch him, Steve chose to walk to the edge of the parking lot and flick his cigarette butt into the street. The man reminded Steve so much of Rumlow. Not physically — Don was more heavyset, with blond hair that he combed to one side — but it was all in the attitude. And it was annoying.

A commotion at the burning house startled him out of his thoughts. He whirled around and saw a firefighter — was it Sam? Steve couldn’t tell — emerge, carrying a girl over to the paramedics, where the man who’d emerged from the house a moment ago was receiving oxygen. 

“Marie!” the man cried, ripping the mask from his face and pressing it into hers. 

Steve held his breath — it felt like everyone was holding their breath — and then the girl squirmed. She was alive. The firefighter passed her over to the paramedics, and Steve abruptly realized he recognized the man and the girl. He’d seen them before, at the town hall meeting back in June. 

The fire was almost out now, with brief, bright flare-ups when the wind gusted, and thankfully the flames hadn’t spread to the buildings on either side. The grocery store sent the staff home anyway, though, and amidst the grumbling from the employees about lost wages, Steve overheard Janelle talking with two other cashiers in front of him. 

“Don’t know what he’s gonna do now,” she said. “That’s the second house they’ve lost.”

“Do you think he even got insurance on this one?” asked the woman to Janelle’s right.

“How could he have?” Janelle replied. 

“Yeah, it’ll be rough for sure,” said the third woman. 

“Rough?” Janelle repeated. “More like impossible. Jacob’s all that kid’s got, and he’s not handling it so well, if this is any indication.”

“Mm hmm,” both women agreed.

Steve walked behind them a few more paces, but they didn’t say anything else on the subject. He dawdled in the parking lot after they left, unsure what to do. He briefly considered going over the fire and offering his services, but he was afraid of getting in the way, and more afraid of stepping on anyone’s toes. So he texted Sam —  _ Be safe, let me know when you’re done and I’ll come pick you up. xo _ — and went to the car to head for home. 

But he stopped with the door still open when he heard shouting, and Sam’s voice loudest of all. 

“Get back, get back!”

Steve whirled, just in time to see Captain Snyder scooping up the teen girl, while another firefighter grabbed the older man’s hand and pulled him away from— the ambulance had caught fire. Flames had completely consumed the inside, climbing up along the open doors to blacken the exterior. The white paint bubbled as it burned, and two firefighters moved closer with hoses, while another shooed civilian onlookers away. Steve knew that was Sam, he could practically see the outline of Sam’s wings folding out, protecting as many people as possible.

The flames were extinguished in a matter of minutes, and thankfully the ambulance didn’t explode. When the hubbub died down, though, Sam took off his helmet and met Steve’s eyes from across the parking lot, and Steve could tell he was troubled. 

Steve tamped down the urge to go to him, to do whatever he could to solve this problem, and got into the car, realizing as he did that he’d clenched the frame and dented the metal just above the door. 

* * *

Sam still smelled faintly of smoke when Steve picked him up at the station house three hours later. “You all right?” Steve asked him when he got in the car.

“Yeah,” Sam sighed. “I guess.”

“Wanna grab a pizza?”

“No,” Sam replied. “I just want to go home.”

“Okay.” Steve started the engine and put the car in gear. He reached over without taking his eyes off the road, finding Sam’s left hand and giving it a squeeze. “Let’s go home.”

After a meal and a shower, Sam seemed better, but he was still quieter than usual. As they were loading the dishwasher, he stopped rinsing a plate and frowned out the window over the sink. Steve waited, but he didn’t speak. 

“Sam, what’s wrong?” he asked finally, after a full minute of silence. 

Sam let out a long breath. “I just can’t figure it out,” he said at last. “Why that ambulance went up. How it went up.”

“The wind?” Steve suggested, but Sam shook his head. 

“Wrong direction. And you saw it,” he went on, putting the plate in the dishwasher and drying his hands on his jeans. “The ambulance was a good fifty feet away from the house. Fire doesn’t jump, Steve. Not like that.”

Steve hummed in agreement. “Did you know that this is the second house that family’s lost to fire?”

“I did,” Sam replied. “Some of the guys were talking about it. Captain Snyder said the first one burned not that long ago, either. Little over a year, maybe?”

“Seems unusual,” Steve commented. “And, correct me if I’m wrong, but it was the same man and his daughter who interrupted the town council meeting, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Sam, grabbing a pan from the stove and setting it in the sink. “Jacob and Marie Fortune. Seems like everybody hates them.”

“Rumor mill?” Steve guessed. 

Sam nodded. 

“So what are they gonna do now?” Steve asked, as Sam rinsed the pan. 

“Apparently the guy’s got a cousin in town, they’re going to stay with him.”

Steve nodded, and silence fell between them. Outside the open window, the hot August sun was setting, turning the yellow walls of their kitchen almost orange. Birds were chattering over the whine of cicadas and the rustle of wind in the corn. It was nice, Steve had to admit, though he still thought he’d prefer traffic noise. The quiet presence of nature made him uneasy, brought back too many memories of camping out during the war.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Sam murmured, breaking into Steve’s thoughts. “I went with the investigators through the house after, and there wasn’t anything flammable anywhere. Not even a scented candle.”

“Well, if their house burned once, they’d be careful about stuff like that,” Steve said reasonably, but Sam was shaking his head.

“Kid must have smuggled in some matches,” he said. 

“You think she did it?” Steve asked, surprised. He would have thought that Sam, of all people, would give the kid the benefit of the doubt. 

Sam sighed, his head hanging over the sink. “When I found her, she wasn’t scared. She was just standing in the middle of her bedroom, looking at the fire like she found it fascinating.”

Steve grabbed the cloth and started wiping the counter. “But you carried her out.”

“Yeah, she  _ fainted _ —” Sam had his back turned, but Steve could hear the sarcastic air quotes in Sam’s voice, “when she saw me. And she had everybody convinced by that trick she pulled with the oxygen mask outside.”

“Not you, though,” Steve said, coming back to the sink and leaning against the counter.

“Not me,” Sam agreed quickly, and he expelled a frustrated breath. “Which doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way that amount of smoke inhalation wouldn’t hurt her. She shouldn’t have been conscious when I got there. No way, no how. It’s impossible.”

“Like the ambulance,” said Steve, and Sam nodded. 

“Like the ambulance,” he repeated. “Like two house fires in less than two years.”

“I’m starting to see why the town thinks that family’s trouble,” Steve joked weakly, but Sam shot him a startled look, like he’d had an epiphany. 

“Impossible is kind of our thing,” he said. “Do you think Nat knew? Do you think she put us here on purpose?”

Steve had no idea what Sam was talking about. He shook his head. “You lost me.”

“That kid, she’s impossible,” Sam explained. “She’s a fire starter.”

Steve frowned. “Like an arsonist.”

“No, like impossible,” Sam insisted. “She’s got  _ powers, _ Steve. The teacher said she’s a demon, maybe—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Steve, holding up a hand. “You think that a kid in this town has some kind of supernatural ability, and that Nat put us here on purpose because she knew about it?”

Sam stared at him a second, then shrugged. “Maybe?”

Steve blinked. “Well, if that’s the case, then she really wasn’t concerned with giving us a quiet retirement.”

“Quiet? Retirement?” Sam chuckled. “I wasn’t even sure you knew those words.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “So, what do we do?” he asked, more seriously.

Sam seemed to deflate somewhat. “Keep an eye on her, I guess,” he suggested. “We can’t do much else, really, without revealing who we are.”

“Right,” Steve sighed. “That whole secret identity thing.”

“It’s a bummer,” Sam agreed. “But we can at least call Natasha and ask.”

* * *

Nat insisted she didn’t know anything about a kid in their town having supernatural powers, and Steve was inclined to believe her. Like Sam said, the whole thing seemed impossible, even with the rumors of the new Inhuman threat. 

As September started, Steve got more involved in the community. He and Sam kept attending council meetings, and even joined the Neighbourhood Watch. They had dinner with Sam’s captain, Joel Snyder, and his wife, Linda. Steve made a point of heading into town on mornings he wasn’t working to get coffee, and struck up a good connection with Miriam Aziz, the owner. She made good coffee, but more so, she was a bit of a gossip; being in her presence was good for their image. 

The first time he saw the kid — Marie — and her dad — Jacob — at the coffee shop, Steve approached them and expressed his condolences on losing their home. Jacob nodded and thanked him, turned down his offer to help. Marie kept looking at him while he and her father spoke, to the point that Steve was struggling not to squirm. Despite that, he chatted with them whenever he saw them, and they eventually fell into a pattern that Steve might have called friendship. 

Still, though, there were some things that Jacob didn’t talk about. When Steve told them about being in the Army before moving here, Marie said that Jacob was a retired soldier, too. Jacob’s lips went thin, his shoulders tightening as he changed the subject to football. 

Marie was more forthcoming; she spoke like she was older than she was, telling Steve about volunteering at the library, how she was enjoying her sophomore year and couldn’t wait to go to college.

“I’m thinking Seattle,” she told Steve the fourth or fifth time they bumped into each other at the coffee shop. “Washington State’s got a great library sciences program, it was recently voted—” 

She kept talking, but Steve wasn’t really listening. He was watching Jacob, the way his face was growing more and more pinched, the way his hands tightened up and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. It didn’t look like he’d been sleeping well, either, and Steve realized that he’d looked like that for a few weeks now. 

When he told Sam about it later, Sam advised him against pushing Jacob further. “He’ll clam up if he thinks you’re prying,” he said. “And then we won’t get anywhere.”

“Sounds like you know a thing or two about talking to veterans,” Steve replied cheekily. “Have you considered a career with the VA?”

“Nah. Been there, done that,” said Sam with a wry smile. 

Steve chuckled, but the smile slid off his face a moment later. Sam  _ had _ been there, and done that. He’d been en route to his own quiet retirement before Steve came along. There was a painful pull in Steve’s chest when he thought about the fact that Sam had given up everything to follow him, and now the life he deserved was out of reach.

“Enough of that,” Sam said, like he could read Steve’s mind, which Steve wouldn’t put past him, honestly. “I made my choice, and now we’re here. There’s no going back now.”

“Okay,” said Steve, shelving his guilty thoughts a little reluctantly. They’d wait for him, he supposed. 

* * *

Life went on, and the last bit of summer faded inevitably into fall. The skies got grayer; the corn started to turn brown. Steve kept going into town each morning for coffee, while Sam invited Jacob and Marie out to church with them. They started carpooling, trading off every other Sunday. Jacob held on to his secrets, never mentioning his military service again, and Marie had her nose in a book more often than not, but the connection was promising, and there were no more unexplained fires, which Steve took to be a positive sign. 

On Sam’s suggestion, the next time Steve ran into Jacob and Marie at the coffee shop, he invited them out for a barbecue.

“We just got the deck finished, it’d be nice to enjoy it before the weather turns miserable,” he said, hoping that the words came out as casually as he meant them to.

“We’d love to,” Marie replied brightly before her father could even take a breath. Steve smiled at her, but he waited for Jacob’s verdict.

“Well, I guess I don’t see the harm,” he said slowly, looking from Marie to Steve and back again. “As long as we’re on our best behavior,” he added.

Steve was a little puzzled — Marie had never been anything but polite to Steve — but he kept his face impassive. This was the kid whose teacher had called her a demon, after all. 

Marie nodded. “Promise,” she said seriously. 

“All right, then,” said Jacob with a smile. “Friday? After work?”

“Perfect,” Steve affirmed. “Looking forward to it.”

Jacob and Marie left, and Steve decided to sit down for a minute and text Sam to let him know they’d have company this weekend. He’d no sooner pulled his phone out of his pocket, however, when an unfortunately familiar shape loomed in front of him. 

“Birds of a feather, huh, Robbie?” Don drawled. 

Steve didn’t really like his alias to begin with, and he certainly wasn’t a fan of Don’s diminutive version of it. Nonetheless, he forced his lips up into a smile and said, “Pardon?” as politely as he could. 

“Freaks and geeks,” Don explained with a smirk. He looked Steve up and down; Steve felt the uncomfortable urge to cover himself up, even though he was fully clothed. “And creeps,” Don added in an undertone, half-turning away as if Steve wasn’t worth talking to. 

Steve got to his feet. Don had a few pounds on him, but Steve had the height advantage, and he’d grown tired of looking up at bullies a long damn time ago. He took Don’s arm and turned him back. 

“Say that again,” he instructed, putting as much threat into his voice as he dared. 

Don’s eyes flicked over him again, assessing the risk, and Steve saw the moment that Don’s arrogance and stupidity backed down.

“Didn’t say nothing,” he muttered. 

Steve smiled thinly. “That’s what I thought.” 

_ Coward, _ he added silently, but he picked up his coffee and his phone and headed for the door. He waved at Miriam behind the counter, ignoring her stunned expression, and brushed past Don like he wasn’t even there.

_Guess what?_ he texted to Sam, when he got in the car. _I didn’t punch somebody who really deserved it._ _You proud of me?_

_ Always, _ Sam sent back.  _ But especially if you’re bringing me coffee. _

_ Always. _ Steve tucked his phone into his pocket and grinned the whole way home.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve was tidying up in the living room when he heard gravel crunching in the drive. He looked out the window just in time to see Jacob’s truck come to a halt behind their sedan. 

“They’re here,” he called. 

“I can tell,” Sam replied, right behind him. When Steve jumped slightly and turned, Sam shook his head with fond smile. “With you on duty, maybe we don’t need a dog after all.”

Steve glared at him, but there was no real heat in it. “Love you, too.”

Sam grinned and kissed his nose — just a brush of soft lips, so tender Steve could swoon — then headed to the front door. 

“Hey there,” he greeted their guests. “Thanks for coming, come on in.”

“Thanks for having us,” said Jacob. He handed Sam a box of brightly-frosted sugar cookies that Steve recognized from the grocery store. 

“We brought cookies,” Marie said. “I wasn’t sure what kind you liked, but these are my favorite, so.”

“Nice of you to share them with us,” Steve told her, and she smiled at him. 

“Wow, you’ve done a lot of work on the place,” Jacob remarked, craning his neck to take in the details of the foyer’s high ceilings. “I remember driving by before you bought it, it looked like it’d been abandoned for years.”

“Foreclosure,” Sam explained, and they all nodded sadly.

“You want a tour?” Steve offered, to lighten the mood. “I can take you around, show you the changes.”

Out of Jacob’s sightline, Sam sent Steve a quick, somewhat panicked look, but Steve waved it off. He’d already made sure there weren’t any incriminating items lying around. 

“I’d love to see it,” Jacob agreed. He looked down at Marie eagerly, but she wasn’t nearly as interested in the topic of home renovation as her father was. Instead, she was playing with the edges of the book she’d brought — Steve recognized it as the fifth in the Harry Potter series — and fidgeting slightly. 

“Come on with me, Marie,” Sam suggested, clearly reading her attitude as well as Steve was. “We’ve got a porch swing out back that’s perfect for a good book.”

“Cool,” said Marie, her body language loosening at once. “Thanks.”

Steve sent Sam a grateful smile, then took Jacob around and showed him the places where he and Sam had done the most work. Jacob asked a lot of questions about drywall that Steve felt very proud to answer, even though he had to fudge the facts a little when it came to how he’d accomplished some of the tasks, since _super strength and flexibility_ wasn’t a viable explanation for Rob MacPherson the same way it was for Steve Rogers. 

“I noticed your car’s dented,” Jacob said, after they’d finished the tour and ended up on the back deck with Sam and Marie. “In a weird place, too, above the driver’s side door. What happened?”

“Uh,” said Steve, at a loss. Luckily, Sam, who was cranking open the patio umbrella, came to his rescue. 

“Remember that big wind we had a few weeks ago?” he said, easy as anything. “Brought down a branch from that poplar out front and dinged it.”

“That sucks,” Jacob commented. 

Sam shrugged. “I’m just glad it didn’t hit the house.”

“True enough,” Jacob agreed. He took a Coke from the cooler when Sam gestured for him to help himself. “Thanks, Marcus. You want something to drink?” he asked his daughter.

Marie didn’t respond. She looked perfectly at home curled up on the porch swing, her feet tucked under her and her nose buried in her book. 

After a moment, Jacob gently nudged her leg with his foot, which sent the swing into gentle motion. “Come on, kiddo, don’t be rude. Put the book away.”

“One sec,” she replied, not so much as blinking. “I’m almost done this chapter.”

Her father pursed his lips. “Didn’t I ask you to leave that in the car?” he reminded her in a low voice.

Marie shrugged and didn’t reply.

“It’s not like you haven’t already read it three times,” Jacob went on. 

Marie wasn’t fazed. “I like it,” she said simply.

For a second, Jacob looked like he was going to press the issue, but then he shrugged and sent an apologetic look at Steve and Sam. Steve waved a hand dismissively. 

“It’s my favorite, too,” he confided, and he was disproportionately pleased by the way that Marie’s lips twitched up in a quick smile before she raised the book in front of her face again.

Sam took a soda for himself and sank into the patio chair beside Steve. The three of them chatted about the work that Sam and Steve had done to the yard, and then about the weather they’d been having, and when Marie put her book down a moment later, she chimed in with something she’d just learned in science class about cumulus clouds. She seemed pretty excited, but when Sam made a passing remark about how the other guys on the volleyball team used to tease him for his high science grades, Marie went quiet, and Jacob changed the subject. 

Other than that small hiccup, it was nice, spending idle time in the sun with friendly people and Sam at his side; Steve almost forgot about their quasi-ulterior motive for inviting Jacob and Marie over until Sam got to his feet.

“Well, I guess I better start the barbecue,” he said. “Rob, do me a favor and grab the burgers from the fridge, will you?” 

“Sure thing,” said Steve. “Can you give me a hand, Jacob?”

“Yeah,” Jacob replied, sounding surprised but willing. 

He stood and followed Steve inside. When Steve twisted around to slide the patio door shut behind them, he noticed Marie wandering over to Sam at the barbecue. That was good; Sam had wanted to give her a little fire safety spiel.

Jacob was right behind him when Steve turned again. He nearly bumped into the man, they were standing so close together. 

“Sorry,” Steve said. 

“My fault,” Jacob answered, quickly putting some space between them. He looked away for a second, but then his eyes slid back to the scene on the deck, to his daughter beside the barbecue. His jaw tightened, and his breathing quickened— the stress reaction was barely perceptible but unmistakable.

“Don’t like having her out of your sight, huh,” Steve said softly. 

Jacob shrugged. “Just a little edgy around open flames these days.”

“Understandable.” Steve paused, then cautiously began the conversation that he’d brought Jacob inside to have. “I wanted to say, the fires that you’ve suffered—”

Jacob’s eyes darted back to Steve, sharp and wary, and Steve had learned enough about tells from Natasha to know that he was keeping a secret. 

“They were terrible accidents,” he went on, and Jacob’s posture eased slightly. “If there’s anything that you need, I hope you won’t hesitate to ask.”

Jacob relaxed another increment. “Thanks,” he said. “I guess it’s hard... for guys like me to ask for help.” 

“That, I understand,” Steve told him with a self-deprecating smile.

“Thought you might,” Jacob said, matching his tone and expression. “It’s been a few years now, but I was Special Forces.” 

“Me too,” Steve replied. That wasn’t what was written on his forged record, but it was the truth; the Howlies were technically called Special Forces, mostly because Philips didn’t know how else to classify them. 

“Then you do get it,” said Jacob. “We didn’t really talk much about our weaknesses.”

Steve nodded, not sure what more to say. After a moment, Jacob looked up, met his eyes. There was a question there, a hesitation. 

“I thought it’d be a temporary thing,” he went on. “Put me through college, you know? Pay the bills. I’m sure you can relate.”

“Sure,” Steve said easily. 

“But it never quite lets you go, does it?” said Jacob. He was still looking into Steve’s eyes; Steve had the distinct impression that they were speaking in code, that there was some hidden meaning that Steve was supposed to detect. 

“No,” Steve agreed, quiet and completely honest.

“They always told me that once you’re in, you’re in it for life,” Jacob continued. “And I was good with that. For myself, at least, but....” 

Steve waited, holding his breath, but whatever Jacob was about to say got lost in a laughing shout from outside. 

“You got those burgers yet, Dad?” Marie called. “I’m starving!”

The intense atmosphere in the kitchen vanished at once; Jacob twitched like he’d been hit. “Guess we’d better get this show on the road,” he said with a forced smile. 

“Right,” Steve replied with his own phony smile — playing along, suppressing his disappointment. 

He reminded himself of Sam’s advice and took out the plate of hamburgers, started setting condiments on the counter. Jacob loaded up his arms and turned away at once, stepping back out through the sliding door so quickly that Steve would swear he’d disappeared. 

* * *

For the rest of the night, Jacob subtly avoided him. He was polite enough in conversation, but he never looked directly at Steve, not even when he was talking to him. He declined when Steve offered to show him the beat-up old Harley he’d found down at Jim’s Salvage last week. When Sam picked up the dishes, Jacob all but leapt out of his seat to help. 

They carried the dishes inside, which left Steve alone with Marie for the first time all evening. 

“So what’s your favorite part?” she asked, startling him out of his worry for her father. 

Steve blinked at her. “My favorite— what?” 

“Of the book,” Marie clarified. “What’s your favorite part?”

“Oh,” Steve said. He drew a deep breath and pretended to think about it; his memory was eidetic, but Marie wasn’t supposed to know that. “The DA,” he told her. “Definitely the DA.”

Marie nodded sagely. “That’s pretty cool,” she conceded. “But I like the part where Fred and George quit school and fly away on their brooms.”

“Oh, yeah,” Steve agreed heartily. “That was awesome.”

Marie smiled, a little sadly. “Sometimes I wish I could do that.”

“I sure wanted to quit school when I was your age,” Steve told her. He felt a little like he was doing another one of those damn high school PSAs when he added, “But you shouldn’t.”

“I know.” Marie looked down at the table and started flicking her thumb over the folded edge of her napkin. “Fred and George got in trouble a lot.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed with a nod, wondering where she was going with this. 

“So they just quit Hogwarts so they’d stop getting in trouble,” Marie concluded. “Doesn’t mean they weren’t smart. Or powerful.”

“But it’s how they use the power that’s important,” Steve put in.

“Right,” said Marie. “Not like Umbridge.”

“Or He Who Must Not Be Named,” Steve added slyly. 

Marie grinned. “Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself, Robert,” she said, in a perfect British accent. 

Steve was surprised into laughing outright. “That’s true enough.”

“Has anybody ever told you you kinda look like Captain America when you smile?” Marie asked suddenly.

Steve felt himself start to freeze up, but he laughed through it, hoping she wouldn’t notice. “Really?” he said. “I don’t think so.”

“Only a little.” Marie shrugged. “I mean, he’s way hotter.”

“Oh,” Steve replied, shifting uncomfortably. He had no idea what to say to that.

“No offense,” she added, just as the patio door slid open, and Jacob emerged, carrying the cookies. Sam was hot on his heels with three cups of coffee.

“Who’s offending who now?” asked Jacob. 

“Nobody,” said Marie carelessly. “I was just telling Rob that he’s not as pretty as Captain America.”

Sam’s eyes were laughing as he gave Steve an appraising up-and-down. “Definitely not,” he agreed, which made Marie giggle again. 

“All right, all right,” Steve groaned, even though he’d suffered much worse teasing from Sam over the years. Best to change the subject before Jacob looked too closely at him or Marie got too attached to the topic of Captain America’s looks. “Let’s try a few of those cookies.”


	4. Chapter 4

They were forced to move the festivities inside when it got dark, and Jacob and Marie left not too long after that, when Marie started yawning. Steve and Sam watched from the porch as the glow of Jacob’s truck’s tail lights was swallowed up in seconds by the tall corn that lined their road, a sight that never ceased to give Steve the creeps. 

“Well, that was enlightening,” Sam commented. He was frowning, so Steve wrapped an arm around his waist and tugged him close. 

“Agreed,” said Steve. He twitched suddenly as a mosquito whined in his ear, and he slapped it out of the air. “But let’s go over our notes inside, okay?”

Sam laughed, but he let Steve go and turned to open the front door. “What, you don’t want to give the bugs an all-you-can-eat super soldier buffet?”

“Probably not a good idea,” Steve replied. He slapped at the back of his neck when he felt an itch and followed Sam indoors. 

They headed to the kitchen by unspoken agreement, and started loading the dishwasher. Their hands and bodies bumped periodically in a lovely domestic rhythm. Steve thought he could really get used to this whole marriage thing, and he wondered if it would be possible to make it official, wanted fugitives or not. 

As they worked, he told Sam about Jacob’s revelation about being Special Forces, and Sam told him about Marie’s excitement over lighting the barbecue. 

“But that’s not very supernatural,” he concluded with a small sigh. “I’ve never met a teenager who wasn’t interested in lighters.”

“They are pretty fun,” Steve agreed. “She didn’t admit to anything about the fires?”

Sam shook his head, looking a little dejected as he closed the dishwasher and turned it on. “But Jacob’s military history might be worth looking into,” he said. “I wonder if Nat could hack in, get us the records.”

“Probably,” said Steve. “I’ve learned not to put anything past her when it comes to computers. She’s a wizard.”

Sam smiled, lopsided and teasing. “No, you’re just a dinosaur.”

“Hey,” Steve protested, but he was grinning, too. 

“You’re a sexy dinosaur, if that helps,” Sam amended, stepping into Steve’s space.

“It helps a little,” Steve had to admit. He put his hands on Sam’s hips and leaned in, and Sam didn’t disappoint, tilting his head until their lips met.

He couldn’t hold back the small startled noise that escaped his throat a second later when Sam slid his hands down his back and grabbed a handful of his ass. Steve slid his tongue between Sam’s lips and hummed pleasurably — Sam still tasted like coffee and cookies, and it was an irresistible combination. 

Sam tightened his hold, pulled Steve a little closer, so Steve did the same, marvelling that they fit so well together, like well-made puzzle pieces. Sparks of heat skipped over Steve’s skin, and he deepened the kiss even more. Soon they were groping and grinding against each other, breathless and hard, while the plates clanked and sang with running water in the dishwasher beside them. 

“Let’s take this to the bedroom,” Sam murmured against his mouth finally, and Steve managed a nod. He led the way backwards through the kitchen and into the living room, only taking his lips off Sam’s when it was absolutely necessary — so, when one or both of them needed to breathe. 

But he caught a glimpse of something outside the front window when he opened his eyes a crack to check his footing on the stairs, and he stopped moving to try and get another look. 

“What is it?” Sam asked, his voice distractingly husky. 

Steve kept his eyes open as he moved his head like they were still kissing. “Somebody’s outside,” he mumbled into Sam’s cheek. “Don’t act like we noticed.”

“Okay,” said Sam. Steve took another few steps backwards and up. Sam followed, his body language still relaxed, but Steve could tell he was sharp and alert. “Think they can hear us?”

“Swept for bugs this afternoon, so, no, not likely,” Steve answered. 

They reached the top of the stairs, out of sight of the front window, and broke apart. Steve pointed in the direction of the spare bedroom, which looked out on the front yard. Sam nodded again and headed that way, while Steve went to their room and flicked on the bedside lamp. He was careful to walk in front of the window a few times to cast a shadow, and then went down the hall to join Sam in the dark, silent space. 

“Anything?” he whispered, delicately adjusting his jeans, trying to send his dick the message that what was going to happen a few minutes ago was now off the table. 

“Corn’s moving in a weird way,” Sam replied, nodding down towards the rows that bordered their property. “What did you see, exactly?”

“A glint,” said Steve, looking where Sam had indicated. A cluster of stalks near the edge of the field was definitely shaking, moving side-to-side. He didn’t know much about crops, but he could tell that it wasn’t the wind doing it. “Like the porch light caught on glass or metal. And maybe a shadow, I’m not—”

Without warning, Sam dropped down to all fours and yanked Steve down with him. 

“—sure,” Steve finished. “What the hell, Sam?”

“It was a scope,” Sam announced in a harsh whisper. “With a pretty little red light on it, too.”

“Fuck,” Steve spat. His mind raced with the implications, trying and failing to come up with a plan to escape without being seen. Why did they have to have a safe house in the middle of nowhere, for crying out loud? He shook his head. “We’re fucked.”

“Now, what kind of an attitude is that, Cap?” Sam teased him with a smirk that only looked a little strained for all that they were essentially under siege. “You forget who you’re married to, or what?”

Steve stared, utterly confused and weirdly elated —  _ married! _ — for a second before it sank in. “Your wings,” he said finally, and Sam’s smirk became a wide grin.

“My wings,” he agreed, and he started to crawl. 

“Won’t that give us away?” Steve asked, following Sam down the hall, straightening up when he did, at the doorway to their bedroom. 

“Steve, if there’s a sniper in place, I’m willing to bet they already know who we are,” Sam said reasonably. He opened the closet door and rummaged in the back corner, emerging a second later with his familiar lightweight armor in one hand and one of Steve’s sweaters in the other. 

“Put this on so you don’t freeze,” he instructed, tossing it on the bed. “We’ll go out the back, take off behind the garage where they won’t see us, that’ll buy us a few minutes. Hopefully we can disappear into some low-hanging—”

A loud chirping sound, like an army of angry birds, cut him off. Steve looked around the room in confusion, instantly on alert again, but Sam reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out his phone. 

“Since when is  _ that _ your ringtone?” Steve asked, distracted despite the dire circumstances. 

Sam squinted at the screen and rolled his eyes. The birdsong — which was a loose term, given the racket — cut out as he hit a button and held the phone to his ear. 

“You asshole, are you in our cornfield?” he demanded. 

Steve relaxed immediately; he knew exactly who Sam was talking to. He laughed, a little giddy with relief. 

“Some ghost you are, we saw you,” Sam went on.

“You know, civilized people knock, Buck,” Steve said, raising his voice slightly so Bucky could hear him, even across the room.

Sam listened for a moment, shaking his head as he put his armor away, back into the corner of the closet where it wouldn’t be seen if someone opened the door. “Just come to the back door and tell us what we need to know.” 

Sam hung up, and Steve followed him out into the hall and down the stairs. “Scared us half to fucking death,” Sam muttered, “what was he thinking?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Steve replied. They reached the kitchen, but Steve left the lights off, so he could peer out the back windows. He didn’t see anyone or anything in the back yard. He extinguished the outside light and waited. 

Sure enough, the patio door slid open a few seconds later, and his best friend stepped into the dim kitchen, wearing full tac gear, right down to the dark smudges around his eyes. Sam closed the patio door blinds, and Steve flicked on the bulb over the stove, making Bucky wince slightly. 

He looked a little rough in the harsh yellow light, but Steve had seen him much worse. Ever since Shuri and her team of neurosurgeons had managed to turn off his triggers ten months ago, he’d been hell-bent on wiping HYDRA off the map— though for atonement or vengeance, Steve wasn’t sure.

Bucky blinked around the room, turning on the spot with his enormous sniper rifle in his hands. He started to lay it across the kitchen table, but Sam arched an eyebrow at him. Bucky gave Steve a look like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and set the gun on the floor instead, propping it carefully upright against the edge of a cupboard. 

Steve huffed out a laugh; combat-ready or not, Bucky was still Bucky. “What are you doing here?” he asked. 

“And why were you lurking outside?” Sam added. 

Bucky scowled at him. “I’ve been out there for three hours,” he said with some impatience. “I was gonna knock as soon as your guests left, but then you guys had to get all—” he waved his leather-clad left hand— “with each other. As soon as I saw that, I hunkered down, figured I’d at least keep an eye on the house while you were occupied.”

“By pointing your scope at our windows,” said Sam dully. “Because that’s not scary at all.”

“How was I supposed to know you’d be in the front bedroom?” Bucky shot back.

“Well, if  _ somebody _ hadn’t been outside with a sniper rifle—”

“Okay,” Steve interjected, resigned to playing the referee. “Okay. Thank you, Bucky, for keeping an eye on us.”

Bucky inclined his head in Steve’s direction, somewhat mollified.

“But you still haven’t answered my question,” Steve went on. “What are you doing here?”

“Got word through my sources of a HYDRA presence in the area,” Bucky reported, matter-of-fact.

The atmosphere of the kitchen grew serious at once. Steve exchanged a startled look with Sam, and he opened his mouth to ask, but Bucky was already shaking his head.

“They don’t know about you,” he reassured them. “Not as far as I can tell, anyway.”

“So, what, it’s a coincidence?” Sam asked, a little incredulously. “We’re here, and HYDRA just happens to be here, too?”

“Apparently.” Bucky chuckled and looked at Steve. “Just like old times, huh? Remember that Christmas in Austria?”

Steve smiled, thinking back. They’d been caught in the middle of a snowstorm. Exhausted and cold and still miles away from their next target, they bivouacked in a drafty old barn on Christmas Eve, only to find out just after midnight that a HYDRA squad had had the same idea. Luckily, they’d been hitting the schnapps pretty hard — it wasn’t a fair fight. The leftover booze gave the Howlies some much needed Christmas cheer, though.

“Remember Dugan swearing that I was cursed?” Steve asked.

Bucky grinned. “And Monty taking bets that you’d trip over your next squid on the way to the latrine?”

Steve laughed out loud. He’d forgotten about that completely. 

“I hate to interrupt old memories,” said Sam, and he really did sound regretful. “But what else do you know about HYDRA being here?”

Bucky half-shrugged, his coat moving silently with him. “Two agents, from what I’ve heard. I thought maybe they were just passing through, but it seems like they’ve been here a while. A year or better. I’m not sure who they’re reporting to, since a lot of the brass is in jail or on the lam, but obviously somebody’s after something.”

“Like what?” Steve inquired. “What could they possibly want here?”

“That’s where my intel gets even dicier,” Bucky said ruefully. “I’ve heard some rumors about defectors hiding out nearby, but I don’t know if I trust it.”

“Defectors,” Sam repeated thoughtfully, turning to Steve. “You said Jacob told you he was Special Forces. Do you think he was a SHIELD agent?”

That hadn’t occurred to Steve, but it seemed possible. “Maybe. You think he’s HYDRA?”

Sam shrugged. “Or maybe he was, and he wanted out. So he did what we did, and moved to the middle of nowhere.”

“Maybe,” Steve repeated, thinking back to what Jacob said earlier about his job with Special Forces, and how he was in it for life.

“Who’s Jacob?” asked Bucky.

Sam gave him a quick run-down on their new friend and his daughter, whom they suspected of having some sort of supernatural ability.

“She sounds useful,” Bucky observed. “If they’re working for HYDRA, you’re in trouble. And if they’re the defectors, well. Let’s just say HYDRA hates losing useful assets.”

Bucky’s mouth was set in a grim line, and for a blind second, all Steve could feel was anger — the white-hot rage that still ran through him when he came face-to-face with what HYDRA had done to his best friend. Sometimes he marvelled that Bucky was more over it than he was.

“If they are HYDRA defectors,” said Sam, bringing Steve out of his thoughts, “and HYDRA’s been here for a year, why hasn’t anything happened yet? You’d think HYDRA would have taken them out by now.”

Bucky shrugged again. “HYDRA has been pretty scattered lately,” he said. “Could be they’re waiting on orders that’ll never come.”

“So we should try and help Jacob and Marie before they get themselves sorted out enough to make a move,” Steve decided. 

“And if they’re not the defectors?” Sam prompted.

“Then I’d suggest you don’t help them,” Bucky replied swiftly.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yes, obviously,” he said. “What I mean is, Jacob and Marie are already close to us. If they’re the bad guys—”

“The bad guys? But she’s just a kid,” Steve protested. When the others didn’t react, he sighed. “Which has never stopped HYDRA before.”

“I think the best thing we can do right now is research,” Sam said practically. “You said that HYDRA’s been here for about a year, Buck, so if Jacob’s been here longer, then we can rule him out.”

“And if we can figure out whether or not he has a background in SHIELD, we can determine if he’s the defector,” Steve finished with a nod. He felt better for having even just the beginning of a plan. 

“Makes sense,” said Bucky. “I’ll work it from my end, too, see what I find.”

He moved to pick up his gun, but Steve stopped him.“Why don’t you stay?” he asked Bucky. “With HYDRA and all, I’m sure we could use you.”

Bucky shook his head. “Too many cooks in the kitchen, I think,” he replied. “Plus, I’d kinda stick out around these parts.”

“Yeah, this town doesn’t have a big cyborg community,” Sam agreed. Bucky scowled.

“But you can at least stay tonight, right?” Steve said. “You’ve gotta be hungry.”

Bucky looked all around the kitchen, like he really needed to think about it. “I could eat,” he said finally. “And probably sleep.”

Steve was delighted. Getting Bucky to stop moving, even just for one night, was a pretty big achievement. So Steve fixed him a plate — getting something for himself while he did, because his metabolism never slowed — and Sam headed back upstairs to make the spare bed. 

Steve watched him go, a little too closely, given the way that Bucky reached over and shoved his shoulder. 

“You’re hopeless,” he muttered. 

Steve felt his cheeks darken, but he didn’t even try to hide the grin that was breaking out all over his face. “I don’t know what you mean.”


	5. Chapter 5

Bucky left just after sunrise, promising Steve that he’d contact them with any new intel, and promising Sam that he wouldn’t lurk around their property with a sniper rifle anymore unless it was absolutely necessary. Steve was a bit sad to see him off, but if there was one thing he’d learned from watching him go back into cryostasis in Wakanda, it was that Bucky was on his own path now, and he wasn’t going to let anyone else dictate it ever again. 

Once he’d gone, Sam called Natasha to get going on their research. A few days later, she couriered them an encrypted flash drive and a dossier. That night, after dinner, they made some coffee and got into it, Sam taking the hard copy while Steve used the computer.

The flash drive contained SHIELD files, naturally. Two folders — project notes and personnel. Steve left the projects aside for the moment, and opened the personnel file. It was for someone named George LaCroix, who joined SHIELD in 1996. LaCroix’s picture looked a lot like Jacob, minus some years and dreadlocks. 

“Would you look at that,” Steve said, turning the laptop so Sam could see. “Apparently we’re not the only guys in town with a fake ID.”

“That’s him all right,” Sam agreed, turning it back. “LaCroix... I saw that name somewhere, where did I see that?” 

“Really?” 

Steve helped him dig through the papers, but they couldn’t find it. “Maybe I just dreamed it,” Sam concluded.

Steve gave a sympathetic shrug. “Maybe.”

“When did he join up?” Sam asked. 

Steve consulted the file again. “Looks like they plucked him out of Special Forces training in 1998.”

“Oh,” said Sam, nodding. “Like Riley. Like all the falcons.”

“Except you weren’t working for SHIELD,” Steve countered.

“No,” Sam agreed. He frowned suddenly. “But I saw them.”

“SHIELD?”

“Yeah. These suits came to watch us one day, took some teams away for qualifying runs.” Sam chuckled. “Ri was so disappointed that we didn’t make the cut, he begged our CO for another shot. Didn’t make a difference, of course. He said they’d seen all they needed to see, whatever that meant.”

After a moment, Sam shook his head, seeming to come back to the here and now. “For the best,” he said somberly.

Steve nodded his agreement. He went back to the computer and finished reading LaCroix’s file. Then he clicked through the other documents. They were records of a special project that Jacob/George was recruited for in the late ’90s: young soldiers, exposed to a certain blood sample, a certain formula that was all-too familiar. 

“That damn serum,” Steve said under his breath.

It was the winter soldiers all over again, only this time couched in respectable terms and hiding in plain sight at a SHIELD facility instead of secreted away in Siberia. 

Sam looked up. “What’s wrong?” 

Rather than explain, Steve shook his head and passed him the laptop, then got up and paced the kitchen while Sam read. 

“Well, that’s disturbing,” Sam said after a moment. “Did you see who was in charge of him after the experiment?”

Steve stopped pacing. “No. Who?”

Sam pointed at the screen. Steve leaned over his shoulder and read about the end of the project. It had only lasted eight months, and after, Jacob was shuffled into a combat role. His team seemed an awful like Rumlow’s STRIKE team, right down to the guy they answered to. 

“Sitwell,” Steve muttered. He’d been so distracted by the serum experiments, he’d hardly looked at the rest of Jacob’s career highlights. 

Sam nodded. “That confirms it, right?” he said. “Jacob is ex-HYDRA, it’s just that HYDRA was calling itself SHIELD at the time.”

“And then when the system collapsed, he ran,” Steve finished.

“Didn’t take him long to get set up here, though,” Sam pointed out. He handed Steve a bundle of papers. “This is the real estate deal for his house, the one that burned down a little over a year ago. Check out the closing date.”

Steve looked down, but his eyebrows shot up. “April 30th, 2014?”

“Yep,” said Sam.

“That’s less than a month after we blew up SHIELD.”

“Yep.”

Steve flipped through the pages. “He had credit scores, references, a  _ bank account? _ All in his new name?”

“Yep.”

“What the hell?” Steve said. It was all he could think to say. 

“I think he was planning to leave before SHIELD fell,” Sam concluded.

“Could be,” Steve replied, but as he perused the papers, a more negative thought occurred to him. “Or HYDRA arranged it. He could be the agent Bucky told us about.”

Sam’s eyes went wide. “You really think that’s likely?”

Steve shrugged. “If he was trusted enough, they could have given him an out when the shit hit the fan, sent him underground to start rebuilding.” 

Sam didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know,” he said. “Seems like Jacob, or George, or whatever, he was just a grunt. A soldier. I mean, no offence, but nothing about him screams management material.”

Steve had to admit that Sam had a point. From the looks of his file, Jacob had been good at his job, but he wasn’t a team leader, and whatever super soldier serum knock-off he’d been given in 1998 didn’t seem to have had an effect. He hadn’t even been made a Special Agent, like Natasha or Clint.

“I hope you’re right,” Steve admitted. “I don’t want to think that he’s an enemy. But if he is...”

He didn’t finish that sentence, but Sam didn’t seem to need him to. He just nodded.

“Another thing,” Steve added, after a moment. “There’s medical records in there, but it’s all Greek to me. Can you take a look?”

“Already did,” Sam replied. “He went to the doctors a lot. Every three months, the same doctors who were involved in the super soldier project back in ’98 would give him a blood test.”

“I saw that, too,” said Steve. “Probably checking their handiwork.”

“Maybe,” Sam agreed. He paused thoughtfully. “Are there any cases of the serum taking effect years after exposure?” 

Steve shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he answered, remembering Bucky’s description of the soldiers who received the serum in Siberia. “It’s a pretty instantaneous thing. Why?”

“It just seems like they were looking for something,” Sam mused. 

“And did they find it?” Steve asked. 

Sam shook his head. “I’d have to see your bloodwork to compare, but nothing seems out of the ordinary to me,” he said. “But maybe that’s not what they were looking for.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whatever they were testing Jacob for, maybe they found it in Marie.”

Steve straightened up. He frowned, thinking this through. “You’re wondering if she got affected by the serum, even though he didn’t,” he said after a moment. 

Sam shrugged. “It alters your DNA, doesn’t it? You could pass the effects down if you had kids.”

“I guess,” said Steve. He’d never had a chance to talk to Erskine about that, and he doubted there was anyone who really knew the ins and outs of the serum’s effect. Still, he was unconvinced. 

“I don’t know,” he continued. “If they were trying to make—”  _ more of me, _ he almost said, “—more super soldiers, I don’t think they succeeded.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the last time I checked, super soldiers—  _ I  _ can’t start fires with the power of my mind.”

“Thank God for that,” Sam muttered, which made Steve chuckle. “But a mutation’s a mutation,” Sam went on. “HYDRA could have given her powers. It’s not like that’s never happened before.”

“True enough,” Steve had to admit. 

He sighed again and rubbed his eyes. It was late — they’d been at this for hours. Sam had to be exhausted, but of course he didn’t say anything. Steve, still behind Sam, rubbed his shoulders and found the muscle tense. Sam sagged a little in Steve’s grip and sighed. 

“I think we’ve done enough for now,” Steve said. “Let’s call it a night.”

“There’s still some—” Sam started to protest. 

“It can wait till morning,” Steve insisted. 

“Okay,” said Sam finally, and he got to his feet. 

They went around the house, closing the windows and locking the doors, then armed the security system. When they got to the bedroom, Steve rooted in the top drawer of their dresser until he found clean pajama pants for both of them, while Sam sat down on the bed to take off his socks. 

Sam took the PJs in exchange for a kiss that started out shallow but quickly became something deeper. Soon Steve was in his lap, straddling Sam’s hips and slipping his hands up Sam’s t-shirt to knead at his back muscles. Steve’s body was getting interested, his stomach fluttering with desire as his semi-hard cock brushed Sam’s belly. He leaned forward, prepared to pin Sam to the bed and get this show on the road, but Sam twisted away suddenly, and yawned. 

“Sorry, baby,” he said around it. “Can we have a rain check?”

Steve chuckled, kissed Sam on the forehead, and climbed off him. “Absolutely,” he replied. 

Sam smiled, sweet and a little dopey. “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” Steve returned, with another chaste kiss. “Now get up and finish getting ready for bed before you fall asleep right here.”

“Bossy,” Sam complained, but he did get up, and fumbled his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth. 

Ten minutes later, after Steve had taken his turn in the bathroom, Sam was already asleep, his hand resting on Steve’s pillow. Steve moved it carefully, resisting the urge to kiss Sam’s fingers, and got into bed. Before he reached over to turn off the bedside lamp, he took another moment to watch Sam sleep, and to reflect. 

As drained as he was after their marathon research session, it felt good to have a mission, a purpose. That satisfaction was old, older than his super-powered body, and it felt like home. But at the same time, confirming HYDRA’s presence made everything too real, made Steve sharply conscious of the danger that they were in, that they’d been in for years. Their time here, though brief, had been peaceful — a quiet retirement, as Sam put it — and part of Steve was sad to let it go. 

Especially since he had a ring on his finger, and so did Sam. Granted, the rings weren’t really theirs; they belonged to Rob MacPherson and Marcus Rosewood — to another life, a life that Steve Rogers couldn’t give Sam Wilson. A life that Steve had arguably robbed from Sam the day he showed up on Sam’s porch with all of SHIELD at his heels. And Sam never complained, never seemed put out by the fact that he deserved so much more than what he’d gotten out of this partnership. Only here, once the dust had settled, did Steve feel like he was giving Sam the life he deserved.

If — no,  _ when _ — things went south, and they had to blow their cover to save the day, what then? Sam had already had to give up his name, his home, his family once before — hell, he’d gone to prison for Steve. Could Steve really do this to him again? Could he take away this life, this chance at normality, at happiness?

“I can hear you brooding,” Sam mumbled out the side of his mouth. 

“Sorry,” Steve said hastily.

Sam hummed. “Get up and run it out of your system, or else go to sleep,” he said, the words blurring into one long, sleepy sound. “Either way, turn out the light.”

“Sorry,” Steve said again. He switched off the lamp, and slid down till his head was on the pillow. Like the mattress, it was just firm enough to keep him from sinking. 

Sam shifted closer, and sighed contentedly when he got his arm over Steve’s torso and his head on Steve’s shoulder. Steve waited to see if he’d speak again, but his breathing became deep and even, and Steve knew he was out for real this time. 

_ Five minutes, _ he told himself. He closed his eyes and started counting.  _ I’ll lie here for five minutes, and if I can’t stop thinking, then I’ll get up again. _

But Sam’s gentle closeness and the rhythm of his breathing had Steve falling asleep before he could even get to three.


	6. Chapter 6

The second half of October brought with it gloomy skies and a chilly wind that rustled the corn stalks around their house. The days he wasn’t working at the grocery store, Steve spent researching and painting, but he found he couldn’t focus long enough on either to accomplish much. He had the unpleasant, anxious feeling of being between missions, and he longed for HYDRA to make their move, and give him something to punch already. 

The uneasy feeling lingered. One afternoon almost two weeks after Bucky’s visit, he and Sam climbed into the car. Steve had a shift at the grocery store that would go until close, but it was already almost dark under the heavy clouds, even though the sunset was still more than an hour away. He tried to shake off his anxiety, but it was like he had a shadow hovering over his shoulder.

“I hate that corn,” he declared. It was the easiest and most readily available scapegoat for his feelings, and he didn’t think he’d ever get used to the way it infringed on his sightlines. Even on the highway, with a broad shoulder between him and the field, he felt penned in. 

“It’ll be gone soon enough,” Sam replied in a soothing voice.

“Thank God,” Steve said emphatically. “But shouldn’t it have been harvested by now? I mean, it looks dead.”

“It’s cow corn,” Sam said, like that explained everything. 

“Huh?”

“Cow corn. Or field corn, depending on who you ask,” Sam went on. “They use it to feed livestock, make ethanol, that kind of thing, so it’s not harvested till it’s dry.” He glanced over at Steve and frowned. “What? What’s the matter?”

Steve realized his mouth was hanging open and closed it. “Nothing, I— did Nat give you a briefing package that I didn’t get?”

Sam snorted. “No, you’re just a damn city slicker.”

“Excuse me,” Steve protested. “Weren’t you born and raised in New Orleans?”

“Yes, and I spent every summer at my grandparents’ ranch,” Sam finished triumphantly. “So there.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re the expert,” Steve grumbled, but he was grinning — amazing how a conversation with Sam could always do that to him. 

“Well, you know what the song says,” Sam added, pulling into the gas station to fuel up. “Save a horse...”

Steve blinked. It took everything he had to keep the smile from his face as he mimed innocent incomprehension. “Sorry?”

Sam shook his head. He shut the engine off, unclipped his seatbelt, and opened the car door. “Never mind, 21 st century musical reference. I’ll be right back.”

When Sam wasn’t looking, Steve pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened Spotify. A moment later, he had a Big & Rich playlist going. Sam glared when he got back in the car and didn’t comment, but when they reached the grocery store, he threatened to make Steve walk to work for the rest of the week. 

Steve just laughed and told Sam he loved him, then headed inside to start his shift. 

* * *

By ten o’clock that night, Steve was going out of his mind. He’d had to work with Dylan, the new guy who always came to work stoned, so every task took them three times longer than it should have. His patience stretched to the breaking point, he was practically fuming by the time he left.

He’d called Sam on his break to let him know he’d find his own way home, so once he was in the parking lot, he checked that his shoes were secure, then shouldered his bag and started walking. Once he was outside the town limits, he would run full speed, zig-zagging across back roads all the way home, and get this itch out of his system. But for now, he had to pretend to be normal and walk calmly through the empty streets of a town that shut down at 9pm on weekdays.

It still felt strange. In New York, there would be bright lights, cars and crowds, music echoing from bars and restaurants. He could stop in anywhere along his route home and get coffee, or tacos, or, hell, a tattoo if he wanted one, if the serum would let him have one. But here, everything was still, and dark, and quiet. 

Except— “Cut it out,” he heard a shrill voice say. 

It was a girl, somewhere around the corner. She wasn’t speaking that loudly, but Steve’s enhanced ears could hear her, and if he listened closely, he could also faintly make out a deeper voice, speaking in a tone that he knew only too well. 

He turned immediately, heading down a side street. The sounds led him to the grounds of the elementary school, to a few figures by the swing set. There wasn’t much light, but Steve could tell that they were teenagers, and the one in the middle was smaller than the rest. 

“Leave me alone,” the girl said clearly, in a voice that Steve now recognized. 

“Marie,” he whispered. 

His hands closed into fists, but he forced himself to stay still, to press his back into the side of the building and remain hidden in its shadow. As he watched, one of the three bigger figures — boys, they were all boys — grabbed at Marie’s backpack. Steve felt his body coil, ready to spring to her aid.

But he didn’t have to.

“I said, leave me alone,” Marie shouted, and she didn’t hesitate, drawing back a fist and punching the tallest boy in the stomach. He doubled over, and one of his cronies reached out, but Marie was too fast and kicked him right between the legs.

“Atta girl,” Steve muttered, grinning as the kid went down with a howl. 

The other boys were backing away now, but the one who’d been kicked shouted after them.

“Cowards,” he called. “Too scared to face a girl?”

“That’s not a girl, it’s a freak,” the guy who’d been punched shouted back. 

“Come on, guys,” the third boy said. He yanked the kicked guy back to his feet and shoved at his shoulder. “Leave her, come on, she’s not worth it.”

They kept going in this back-and-forth as they slouched away, occasionally calling taunts over their shoulders at Marie. She was holding her ground with her fists raised, breathing a little harder than usual, but she didn’t chase them. 

Steve watched her for a moment with a swell of pride, then peeled himself off the wall. 

“Hey,” he said softly, when he was behind her.

Marie whirled around and swung. Steve’s reaction time was quicker; he got his hand up to block her punch, but a split second later he had to drop it, shouting in surprise. He looked down— his palm was seared and smoking.

“Oh, God,” Marie cried, her face contorting with dismay. “Rob, I—”

“It’s okay,” Steve hurried to say, even though he was gritting his teeth at the intense pain. “It’s okay, it’ll heal.” 

“I’ll call for help,” Marie said, dropping her bag to the ground and reaching for the zipper. 

Steve stopped her with his good hand, gripped her wrist and shook his head. The serum would start to work its magic any minute now, but he didn’t know how to explain that— not to Marie, and definitely not to a paramedic. 

“Don’t do that,” he told her, as gently as he could, given the circumstances. “Trust me, I’ll be fine. I just need a minute... to...” 

He trailed off as he looked at his palm again. It was burned in a round shape, three rings around a star in the centre. By morning there wouldn’t even be a scar, but right now the mark was unmistakable.

“My shield,” he mumbled, the words slipping out before he could catch them.

“I’m so sorry,” Marie blurted out. “It was an accident.”

“I know,” Steve said, regaining focus. He inhaled and blew the air out over his palm. “Do you have any water?”

Marie nodded frantically and dug a bottle out of her backpack. It was bright purple and — thankfully — rattled with ice cubes. Steve took it and poured some over the burn. Wincing, he closed his hand, keeping a couple of the rapidly melting chunks tight to his skin. 

“That’s better. Thank you,” he said, because Marie was looking like she might cry. “Who were those boys?” he asked, hoping to distract her. 

It worked— a little. Marie shrugged. “Seniors. They followed me from the library.”

“What’d they want?”

Another shrug. Marie was fiddling with her ring of keychains, one of which was shaped like his shield. Steve realized belatedly that she had been using them to give her fist more weight, like brass knuckles— smart fighter, he thought. 

“Travis wants me to go out with him,” Marie said finally. “He’s been asking for a while now.”

“And you don’t want to?” Steve guessed. He opened his hand, then grimaced at the sight of the burn and closed it again around another ice cube. 

“No,” Marie answered. For the first time she sounded sure, even though her hands were still busy with the keychains and she wouldn’t meet Steve’s eyes. 

He noticed that she was tracing the edge of the miniature version of his shield, and, everywhere her fingers went, the metal glowed faintly orange. Marie shaped the shield like it was clay, perfecting its arched form, smoothing out the part that had apparently gone flat when it connected with Steve’s hand.

Then she caught him looking and shoved her hands behind her back, out of sight. 

“It’s okay,” Steve told her. He smiled gently and held out his hand, showing her the burn that was already blistering. “See?”

Marie’s eyes widened, but when she looked up, something had changed — hardened — in her expression. 

“Who sent you?” she demanded. “You’re not getting my dad.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve asked, surprised. 

“You can try, but I won’t let you,” Marie went on. Her voice wavered, but she squared her shoulders like she was readying for another fight. “I— I’ll burn you. Kill you, if I have to.” 

Slowly, Steve raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. He knew how dangerous her abilities could be. “Marie,” he said softly. “I’m not here to hurt you or your dad.”

Marie’s eyes flickered over him, taking in Steve’s appearance, but it was clear that she wasn’t ready to let her guard down. 

“Then who are you?” she asked. “And how are you healing so fast?”

Steve hesitated. He glanced down again at the small shield that was still clenched in her hand. It was bright orange with heat now; her fists were steady. But her eyes....

Steve could tell that she was afraid of him, and that just wasn’t right. 

He took a breath, threw caution to the winds. “I’m Captain America,” he said, even though that wasn’t really true anymore. 

Marie stared for a long moment, her mouth hanging open as the shield in her hands gradually faded back to a dull silver. 

“So you don’t just look like him,” she said finally.

“No,” Steve said, somewhat awkwardly, thinking back to their conversation on the porch. 

“Are you gonna arrest my dad?”

“Uh,” Steve stammered. “I don’t actually arrest—”

“Because he didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know,” Steve reassured her. He did not, in fact, know that, but he wasn’t going to say anything to freak the kid out more than she already was. 

“He quit,” Marie went on. She’d dropped her fists now, but her eyes were huge and pleading. “He didn’t know what they doing, what they wanted to do, and as soon as he found out, he quit, and we moved here.”

The words came as a relief to Steve. There was still a chance that Marie didn’t know the truth, that Jacob was lying to her about why they came here, but it was nice to think that he’d been right in assuming that Jacob was innocent— the defector, and not the agent of HYDRA.

“Okay,” Steve said softly. Careful to telegraph each one of his movements, he turned to the swing set behind him. “Why don’t we sit down, and let’s back up a little. Start at the beginning.”

Marie swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay.”

She sank onto a swing and let her toes drag against the sand as the momentum nudged her back and forth. Steve sat down in the swing beside her, testing it before he trusted it with his entire weight. Once he was settled, he kept his body language relaxed, watching and waiting. 

“I grew up in DC,” she began eventually. “Everybody at my school was a senator’s kid, or their parents worked for SHIELD, like mine.”

“So you know what your dad used to do?” Steve asked. 

Marie flapped her hand in a  _ so-so _ gesture. “He didn’t really talk about it.”

Steve nodded. “But you said he quit?”

“He did,” Marie affirmed, and her eyes dropped to the ground. “It was my fault.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Steve told her.

Marie just shrugged. “I had to go to the doctor all the time when I was little. And then when I was ten, I had appendicitis. They took me to have surgery, and I was scared, and when they tried to knock me out, I— my skin melted the needle,” she finished hoarsely, like it was a shameful secret. 

Steve felt his eyebrows shoot up, but he didn’t reply.

“After that, the doctors did even more check-ups. Every few months, I think,” Marie went on, her eyes downcast. “One time, Dad was away, and Mom wouldn’t take me. So Mr. Sitwell came to the house.”

_ Sitwell, _ Steve thought with a small sigh.  _ Of course. _

“Him and my mom used to be friends,” Marie explained. “But when she said she wouldn’t take me to the doctor, they had a fight. Mom sent me to my room, but I heard them yelling. About me.”

Steve bit his tongue. He was desperate for answers, dying to suss out the connection between Sitwell and Marie’s situation, but the kid was upset; this wasn’t the time.

“None of that’s your fault, Marie,” he reiterated softly. 

Marie lifted her head, stared at the empty school building across the tarmac. “After that happened, Dad said we were gonna go,” she said in a steadier voice. “He told me I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody. Not even my friends.”

“That couldn’t have been easy,” Steve murmured sympathetically. 

“No,” Marie agreed. “Dad said that maybe I’d still see them after we left, but then...”

“But then...?” Steve prompted her.

“But then  _ you _ blew everything up,” Marie concluded, shooting him a sideways look. 

Steve grimaced. “Right. Sorry about that.”

“It happens,” Marie replied, and Steve marvelled silently as she pushed her swing back into motion. Only a teenager could be so cavalier about global events.

“That was a weird day,” she added a moment later.

Steve did the math quickly. “You would have been, what, twelve? Sixth grade?” 

Marie nodded. “Going on seventh.”

“What happened?”

“The school was put on lockdown,” Marie said. “None of us really knew what was going on, but some of the older kids, the ones with phones, they told everybody that Captain America was a bad guy, and he was attacking the city. I didn’t believe it,” she added in a lower voice.

“Thanks for that,” Steve said. He’d heard this from quite a few people over the years, but it always meant more coming from a kid. 

Marie nodded. “It took a really long time for the lockdown to lift,” she continued after a pause. “It was after dark by the time parents were coming to pick up their kids. When Dad got to the school, he had all my stuff in the car, and he... he said we couldn’t go home anymore. That was the only time I ever saw him cry.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said earnestly. “That’s really hard.”

Marie didn’t reply, except to push herself back and forth on the swing a little more. 

Steve watched her, thinking. He wanted to ask about her mother, but he feared he already knew the answer. He’d never seen Jacob with a woman; Marie had never mentioned her mother, not even in passing, before tonight. Clearly, she wasn’t in the picture anymore, but what had happened — was she in jail? Or was she one of the agents that Steve and his team had attacked? 

His heart told him he couldn’t ask, that whatever had happened wouldn’t be easy for Marie to talk about, but his head told him he needed to. He had to know what kind of threat they were facing. If Marie’s mother was with HYDRA, and she knew where her daughter was....

“Did your mom keep working for SHIELD?” he asked finally, hating himself for having to say it. 

“Uh,” said Marie. 

Steve glanced over, but she was avoiding his eye, looking off in the other direction. While he waited for her to gather her thoughts, he noticed the chains of the swing turning a dull orange. He could feel the heat start to radiate from her and subtly adjusted his position, prepared to intervene if he had to. 

“I think so,” she said, but she sounded doubtful. Then she frowned, her face screwing up like she was trying to solve an algebra equation. “I mean, no. No, she didn’t.”

Steve watched her from the corner of his eye, thinking for the first time since they’d started talking that she was lying to him. The chains in her hands were getting brighter; soon her weight on the swing would pull them into pieces. 

“Marie?” he said softly, hoping not to provoke her. 

Marie exhaled sharply and took her hands off the chains. “I don’t know where she is, okay?”

That felt more like the truth, Steve thought.

“It doesn’t matter,” Marie went on. “She’s not here.”

Steve let the subject drop, deciding he could investigate it later. He pushed himself to his feet, wincing slightly when his burned palm brushed the chain. 

“It’s late,” he said. “Your dad’s probably worried sick.”

“You’re right,” said Marie, standing as well. “It’s past my curfew, I should get home.”

“I can walk you,” Steve offered, and he was relieved when Marie accepted. 

He let the silence stand between them as they left the playground, Marie leading them through back streets that Steve had never seen. He noticed her glance over a few times while they walked, her expression gradually going from wary to puzzled.

“What is it?” Steve asked finally. 

“Nothing,” said Marie. “It’s just... aren’t you gonna ask?”

“Ask...?”

“I thought you were gonna ask about the fires.”

Steve frowned, confused. “Do you want to talk about that?”

“It’s what everyone else wants to talk about,” Marie muttered.

“Marie,” Steve said. He slowed to a stop and turned to face her. “I don’t care if you burned your house down, I’m still going to protect you. And your dad. So tell me what you want to tell me, and I’ll listen. But this isn’t an interrogation.”

Marie blinked up at him. She was tall for her age, and if Steve was in his old body, he’d bet that she’d be taller than him. 

“It was an accident,” she confessed, the harsh streetlight glinting off her dark eyes. 

“I thought so,” Steve replied gently. “I know you wouldn’t mean to endanger your father like that.”

“My— what?” Marie said. “He wasn’t home.”

“But I saw him,” Steve argued. “I was in the parking lot when—”

“No, not that fire,” Marie cut in. Her keys were jingling in her hands again, very quickly. “I didn’t have anything to do with that one.”

Steve frowned. “I’m confused. S— uh, Marcus said that you—”

“I know,” Marie interrupted again. “And the first time, it was me, but I swear didn’t start the second fire.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asked, and only when Marie’s nostrils flared did he realize how condescending the question sounded. “I’m sorry,” he added in a rush. “I believe you.”

Marie exhaled. “Thank you,” she said pointedly.

They walked a little farther, Steve’s mind running back over the events of that day a few months ago, thinking of his conversation with Sam after the fire. Sam hadn’t actually caught her playing with fire, only looking at it and breathing in smoke without losing consciousness. But how else could the fire have started? Especially given that she was responsible for the first one, intentionally or not. 

“The ambulance was me,” Marie added in a low voice, like she could hear Steve’s doubts. “And that was an accident, too.”

“I figured,” Steve agreed. 

“Do you ever think,” Marie began, but then she trailed off. 

“Think what?” Steve prompted her.

“Think that maybe you’re a mistake, like you’re something that you’re not supposed to be?” 

Steve hesitated. He had thought that — of course he had, especially when he was small and couldn’t ever seem to get well. And after the serum? He remembered the first time he looked in the mirror, how his arms seemed monstrously large, his hands like giant spiders. He thought about how he used to miss his old body, even as he marvelled at what his new body could do. He remembered the traces of fear that flickered across people’s faces whenever he did something that should have been impossible. 

“Sometimes,” he answered finally. “Especially when I first got the serum.”

“But that was done to you,” Marie protested. “You chose that. I was born like this.”

Steve reached out, put his hand on her arm, and stopped them both. “Marie, you’re not a mistake. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“That’s not what everyone else thinks,” Marie muttered. “You saw. They think I’m a freak.”

“Well, to hell with everyone else,” Steve said, which had the intended effect of making the corners of Marie’s mouth twitch into something close to a smile. “You have abilities that they can’t understand, and that makes them afraid,” Steve went on, “but that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you, that means there’s something wrong with them. Their small-mindedness is not your problem.”

Marie nodded like she’d heard this before, but then she shook her head. “But what if people get hurt?”

“Do you want to hurt people?” Steve asked her, direct and firm.

Marie shook her head again, more emphatically this time. “No! Of course not.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Steve replied simply. “Your abilities are a gift, and how you choose to use them is up to you.”

“Dad says I shouldn’t use them at all,” Marie said.

“Well, that’s an option, too,” Steve said reasonably.

“He was so mad,” Marie went on. “About the second fire. I told him it wasn’t my fault, but he didn’t believe me. He just kept going on and on about how I couldn’t show it off like that and how dangerous it was. He said people would notice, that Mr. Sitwell would come after us.”

_ Mr. Sitwell’s dead, _ Steve couldn’t tell her.  _ My best friend killed him, because I didn’t intervene in time. _

“It’s going to be all right,” he said instead. 

“Thanks,” Marie replied in a small voice.

Steve acknowledged that with a small nod and another reassuring smile. They were around the corner from Marie’s house now, but Marie didn’t move. Steve waited for whatever she was trying to say. When the question came, it wasn’t what he expected. 

“Would you give your powers back, if you could?”

Steve shook his head. He’d thought about it a lot over the years. “No,” he replied. “There are a lot of people that I wouldn’t have been able to help otherwise.” 

Marie half-smiled and sighed. “I haven’t helped anybody.” 

“You’re helping me right now,” Steve countered.

“You’re just saying that,” Marie replied, and though her tone was joking, Steve could tell she still wasn’t convinced.

“Even superheroes need a hand sometimes,” he told her, showing her the blisters on his palm again. “Okay?”

Marie stared at him for a long moment, then she nodded. “Thanks, Captain America.”

“Technically, that’s not who I am anymore,” he tried to joke, but she gave him a surprisingly stern look. 

“Captain America is who you always are,” she declared. 

“Okay, then,” he conceded, skeptical but not willing to argue the point right now. “Let’s get you home.”


	7. Chapter 7

As they approached Marie’s house, Steve noticed an unfamiliar blue van parked behind Jacob’s truck in the drive. 

“Whose car is that?” Marie asked.

Steve hushed her, sticking his arm out to stop her in her tracks. He pointed to a neighbor’s hedge, and the two of them crouched out of sight, just as Jacob emerged from the house with someone else, a heavyset someone with pale, stringy hair combed to one side. 

“Look, Don,” Jacob said, quiet but urgent. “I’m sorry. She was just defending herself, you know she doesn’t know who you and Travis are.”

“That’s not the point and you know it,” Don said, whirling around. Faced with him, Jacob seemed to shrink a little. “It shouldn’t have come to this, me and my boy tracking you two all over the country. You should have come back a long time ago.”

“Don,” Jacob tried, while Don opened the van door, spilling light onto the pavement and lighting up Jacob’s pleading expression. 

“Your daughter belongs with us,” Don concluded. “Sooner or later, she’ll get there. Sooner, if I have anything to do with it.”

“But she’s just a kid,” Jacob protested. 

That seemed to give Don pause. “She is,” he agreed. “And that’s why we ought to do this the easy way instead of the hard way. Twenty-four hours to bring her in, or I do it for you. Got it?”

“Got it,” Jacob said miserably. 

Don nodded. “Good. I know you’ll do the right thing,” he concluded pointedly, his tone still threatening. “For yourself, and for your daughter.”

Jacob nodded and stepped back. Don climbed into the van and started the engine; a moment later, he was nothing but a set of taillights on the otherwise empty street. Jacob stared after him, then slowly turned and headed back inside.

“What were they talking about?” Marie whispered.

It took Steve a second to realize that she probably didn’t hear the conversation as clearly as he did at this distance. _Small mercies,_ he thought. Still....

He gave her his cell number — he had to break out the Cap glare when she tried to label it “First Avenger” in her contacts list — and a tracking device that he’d been carrying around since Bucky’s news, just in case he noticed anyone suspicious in town. He opened the box and showed Marie how it worked, told her to keep it on her person at all times. 

“You gonna tell my dad if I sneak out one night?” she asked, sounding every bit a teenager. 

“I might,” Steve replied, but he laughed when she seemed to take him seriously. “I won’t. I’m not trying to infringe on your privacy,” he clarified. “It’s just so we can help if you get in trouble.”

“We?” Marie repeated. “You got the whole team here?”

Steve shook his head. “There is no team anymore,” he answered honestly. “But there are people I trust, and I’ll call them if I have to.”

“Like Marcus?” she asked.

Steve hesitated. He wasn’t going to out Sam — as Falcon or as queer — without talking to him first, but they hadn’t made it a secret that they were a couple, and Steve couldn’t suppress the worry about what Marie might say about Captain America not being straight. 

“Yes,” he said finally. “We can trust Marcus. He’s my partner.”

But Marie just nodded, taking the device out of the box. “Cool, thanks.”

Steve took a second to feel relieved at her reaction, then glanced through the hedge, down the street where Don’s van had disappeared. “I want you to activate that tracker now, okay?” he added, trying to sound serious without frightening her. 

“But I’m right here,” Marie protested with another hint of teenage sass. “I’m not going anywhere else tonight, Cap, I promise.” 

Steve smiled a little at the nickname, but it didn’t alleviate his concerns. “Indulge me?”

Marie assessed him in the dark. “Okay,” she said finally, and she switched the tracker on before tucking it into the tiny pocket of her jeans. “I guess you know what you’re doing.” 

“Glad you think so,” Steve said sarcastically, sassing her right back.

Marie chuckled, but before she could reply, a buzzing erupted between them. Marie’s phone was glowing in her hand, and in its light she sent Steve a stricken expression.

“It’s Dad,” she said. “Should I answer it?”

“Don’t bother, we’re right here,” said Steve, getting back to his feet as she declined the call.

“Before we go,” Marie said, following him, “can I— should I tell Dad who you are?”

Steve gave himself until they got to Jacob’s front step to think about it before he answered. “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said at last. “Just in case.”

Marie nodded, serious. “Okay.”

Steve knocked on the door. Jacob’s face flooded when relief when he opened it and saw Marie, but his expression changed to confusion when he noticed Steve was there with her. 

“Rob,” he said, sounding surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“Found somebody fighting bullies at the playground on my way to meet Marcus after work,” Steve explained. “She said it’s past her curfew, so I figured I’d better walk her home.”

Jacob nodded, though he was starting to look worried. “Thanks,” he said vaguely.

“Any time,” Steve replied. “Goodnight.”

“Wait,” Marie said, just after he’d turned away. She was holding out the miniature shield keychain. “You should have this.”

Steve smiled but shook his head. “I think you need that more than I do right now.” 

He raised his hand in a wave and walked away, listening for the click of the door behind him. He went just far enough to be out of sight of their windows, then he pulled his phone out of his pocket and called Sam.

* * *

“You’re driving,” Sam told him as soon as Steve opened the passenger door. 

“Okay,” Steve agreed. He rounded the front of the car while Sam went around back. “Sorry to make you come out here so late,” he added as they buckled their seatbelts. 

Sam made an indifferent noise through his yawn and shrugged one shoulder. “You said it was important.”

“It is,” said Steve, and he recounted the night’s events. By the time he was finished, Sam was looking much more alert. 

“Let me see your hand,” he said. Steve held it out without argument, and Sam let out a low whistle as he examined it gingerly. 

“Yikes,” he commented, letting go. 

“It looks worse than it feels,” Steve lied, suppressing a wince as he put his hand back on the steering wheel. 

“Sure,” said Sam, and Steve could tell that Sam didn’t believe him for a second. Thankfully, he didn’t push the issue. “So that confirms it, huh? Jacob’s the defector.”

“And Don’s HYDRA,” Steve concluded. “Knew there was a reason I didn’t like that guy.”

Sam nodded. “Weird that he was so civil. I would’ve thought that Don would take him by force.”

“Catch more flies with honey,” Steve countered.

“Even for HYDRA?”

Steve shrugged. 

“And he said twenty-four hours?” Sam asked a moment later, as they pulled into the drive. 

“He did,” Steve confirmed. 

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t really think I want to let him get that far,” Sam said. 

“Agreed.” Steve parked the car behind the garage and flicked the headlights on and off three times — the signal for Bucky to come inside, if he was still nearby. 

“You really think he’s still out there?” Sam asked. “He said he wasn’t gonna stick around.” 

“I know,” Steve acknowledged, opening his door, “but if there’s a chance, I’m gonna take it. We’ll need him.”

“Okay,” Sam said slowly, as he climbed out of the car. “What’s your plan?”

Steve shut the door and looked out into the night. The stars were hidden behind the clouds, and there was no moon; more than a few feet out, it seemed too dark, like the lone light over the garage just wasn’t enough to fight the onslaught of the night. Somewhere, a long ways off, there was a group of coyotes barking and howling, but otherwise there was only the buzz of the garage light and the faint rustle of a breeze in the dry corn. 

In the quiet, Steve thought about everything that had happened tonight, what the future held, what kind of threat they were facing, and the innocent people who needed their help and protection. _Same old story,_ he thought, but it wasn’t a bitter notion; it was almost like coming home after a long trip to find the house a little musty but unchanged. 

_Captain America is who you always are,_ he heard Marie say again. 

“Steve?” Sam prompted, bringing Steve out of his thoughts. 

“I’m tired of waiting for HYDRA,” Steve said at last, knowing that it wasn’t really an answer to Sam’s question. “I don’t like playing the game by their rules.”

“Me neither,” said Sam, his voice a quiet murmur beside him. “So what do we do?”

Steve turned to face Sam. His doubts and worries about ending their quiet retirement, about blowing up the life of Marcus Rosewood and Rob MacPherson, faded into the background when Steve met Sam’s eyes. Even with the weird shadows cast by the garage light, he could tell that Sam was with him, ready for any challenge that they might face. 

“We move,” he declared. “Get Jacob and Marie somewhere safe, and then we go after Don. Try to smoke out whose orders he’s following.”

“There’s got to be a local cell,” Sam agreed. “We’ll go over the research again. I’ll call Nat. Hopefully she can get Bucky on it, too.”

“For sure,” said Steve. He set his jaw and turned towards the house. “Let’s get to work.”


	8. Chapter 8

While Sam called Natasha, Steve re-read Jacob’s file. Jacob had been stationed at the Triskelion in DC, which backed up Marie’s story, but he ran a number of missions across the country, and a handful of international ones. Scanning the dates and locations, Steve realized that he recognized some of them. It looked like Jacob had subbed for one of Rumlow’s guys a couple times, but never on a mission that Steve shared with them. 

“Okay, I give up,” said Sam suddenly. “Neither of them are answering.”

Steve looked up, startled. “What?”

“Natasha and Bucky,” Sam explained. “I can’t get reach either of them.”

Steve frowned. “That can’t be good. Did you email?”

“About to,” Sam replied. He took the seat next to Steve. “What’s the code word again? The one that means we need an answer ASAP?”

“It’s not a word,” Steve reminded him. “It’s that face with the gritted teeth. Just make something up, and put the face in.”

Sam nodded and started to type on his phone. “Subject line or text?”

“Both?” Steve suggested. They hadn’t actually worked out a policy for this. “I’m sure they’ll see it.”

“I hope so,” Sam muttered.

“They will,” said Steve, sounding more confident than he felt. He wasn’t letting himself think about what they’d do without back-up. 

Bucky and Natasha’s help was essential to his plan. Bucky knew HYDRA better than anyone. He’d be able to put together the pieces, find out who Don was working with and what they were after. Not to mention that he was damn useful in a fight. 

And Natasha — Steve needed her to get Marie to a secure location and, more importantly, to help him figure out a long-term plan for her. Because Steve could save her from HYDRA now, but what then? Natasha could contact their new SHIELD allies, and they could... send her somewhere, Steve supposed. But where? Not for the first time, he missed the Avengers complex. Marie would be safe there, able to flourish under the guidance and protection of others like her. Without that, well.... This was where Natasha came in. 

A quiet thump interrupted Steve’s musings. He looked over, saw that Sam had set his phone down on the table. “Sent,” he announced. “You find anything?”

“Not much,” Steve admitted. “I thought maybe there’d be some mention of Marie’s mother in the SHIELD records that Nat sent, but...” He shook his head.

“Okay,” said Sam, opening his own laptop. “You keep doing that, I’ll hop online and see what I can find.”

“Sounds good,” said Steve, and he started combing through the information about the the project that Jacob had been recruited for again. 

There were no women participants in the ’98 experiment, and no women at all mentioned in Jacob’s file. He scanned some of the other documents that Natasha had unleashed on the Internet a few years ago, too, but he didn’t know what he was looking for, so he didn’t get very far.

He was about to give up when Sam said, “Aha.”

“Got something?” Steve asked, looking up.

“Maybe,” Sam replied. “I was looking in newspaper records in DC, searching for marriage banns, birth announcements, obituaries — anything that would give me a foothold, and I think I found her.”

“Really?” Steve didn’t want to get his hopes up, but if there was a chance... 

“August 28, 2002,” Sam read. “George LaCroix and Bonita Juarez are pleased to announce the birth of their daughter, Sofia.”

“Sofia,” Steve repeated. “I wonder if that’s—”

Sam jerked his head up, his eyes wide. “I know where I saw it,” he said.

“Saw what?” Steve asked, startled and confused. 

“Remember how I said I saw the name LaCroix somewhere?” Sam explained. Steve nodded. “It was on Marie’s book.”

“The— her Harry Potter book?”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “While we were waiting for you and Jacob to come outside, she dropped it, and when I picked it up, I saw  _ Sofia LaCroix _ written on the inside cover. I assumed it was secondhand or something, and then I forgot about it.”

“Maybe that’s why Jacob wanted her to leave it in the car,” Steve said, remembering their exchange on the back deck. “And why he was so anxious when I found her book in the gym, the day of the council meeting.”

“That would make sense,” Sam agreed.

“Okay,” Steve said, feeling newly optimistic. “We have a name now,” he said. “So let’s keep digging.” 

“Think you can go on without me?” Sam asked. “I’m wiped, and if I stay up much longer, I’m gonna start missing things.”

Steve glanced at the clock and winced. “It is pretty late. You should get some sleep.”

Sam nodded. He leaned across the table — over the papers scattered everywhere, and the laptop still open to Juarez’s file, and the tablet that was blinking steadily with the location of Marie’s tracker — and managed to find Steve’s lips with his own. They were warm and dry, slightly chapped. Familiar.

“Come get me if you need me?” Sam asked when they parted.

“For sure,” Steve said, even though he had no intention of doing that. 

From the way Sam was looking at him, he knew it was a lie, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he just kissed Steve again and headed upstairs. Steve watched him go, then made himself a cup of instant coffee and dove back in. 

It only took him a few seconds to find a personnel file in the mess that Nat had left of SHIELD’s classified documents on the internet. Bonita Juarez, he discovered, had started at SHIELD two years before Jacob did. She began as a counselling intern, and a year later, she was hired as a full-time social worker. Sitwell, Steve noticed, was listed on the offer of employment. 

Steve scrolled down, but there was nothing else. In Jacob’s file — in every other SHIELD personnel file that Steve had ever seen — there was a lot of paperwork. Security clearances, background checks, a list of assignments, even insurance records. Usually, as in Jacob’s case, there were other things too, like medical paperwork and expense reports. But Bonita’s file had none of that. 

Steve went back to the documents that were now public records and did a more thorough search. He found a few scraps: a tax receipt for her 2009 salary, a commendation for outstanding service of some kind from 2011, and an official reprimand, thin on details, filed against her in 2013. But it was far from a paper trail. Did Natasha remove some of these documents after letting them out? Or maybe they had they never existed in the first place? In either case, it looked like Bonita, unlike her partner, had hardly made a dent at SHIELD. 

Steve drummed his fingers on the side of his mug. There was something he was missing, something he wasn’t seeing. He thought again of how Marie had reacted when he’d questioned her about her mother. The topic had clearly made her uncomfortable, judging by the way her powers had activated. And she’d changed her answer, Steve remembered, when he asked if her mother had stayed on at SHIELD after she and her father left DC. Like she was trying to find the right thing to say, the words that would make Steve stop asking about it. Not for the first time, Steve wondered what she hadn’t told him, why she was being dishonest. 

Maybe her mother had powers, too, Steve thought a moment later. Maybe there weren’t any records because HYDRA didn’t want anyone knowing what she did. 

But that didn’t make sense, either. Steve’s own file was here, along with detailed notes on the Avengers Initiative and the index of powered people. If SHIELD kept those records, why wouldn’t there be anything for Bonita?

Feeling very much at an impasse, Steve sighed and got up to take his empty mug to the sink. While he washed it, he watched the screen of his tablet. The steady blink of Marie’s tracker reassured him; it hadn’t moved since he got the app up and running. If he figured out nothing else tonight, at least he knew Marie was safe. 

After he dried his hands, he picked Sam’s phone up off the table and checked it. He was hoping that Natasha or Bucky would check in and give him some back-up, even if it was from a distance, but there was nothing.

He slipped Sam’s phone into his pocket with his own and walked to the window. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the birds were chirping; it wouldn’t be long till daybreak. Sleep was probably a good idea, he decided. He’d pretty much exhausted their current resources, and if they were going to confront HYDRA tomorrow, he’d need at least a little rest. 

He turned the lights out and climbed the stairs, finding his way to Sam’s side in the dark.


	9. Chapter 9

It felt like he’d barely closed his eyes when Sam’s phone erupted with a ringtone that Steve unfortunately recognized. It was an urgent alarm, calling Sam into action. Steve watched in awe as Sam went from dead asleep to wide awake, grabbing the phone and climbing out of bed in one motion. 

“Yep,” he said, his voice only a bit husky from sleep. He listened for a moment and switched on the lamp. “I understand. See you in fifteen minutes.”

He hung up, went straight to the dresser, and pulled on a clean pair of work pants. “Fire?” Steve asked unnecessarily.

“Yep,” Sam said again, turning around as he did up his fly. “Captain Snyder’s gonna pick me up.”

Steve nodded, but this information made him uneasy. Snyder, being the captain for the region, went from town to town as he was needed. If he was picking Sam up, it meant he was already nearby, which seemed odd to Steve for reasons that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. 

“Does it sound like Marie?” he asked, shoving the feeling aside. He got out of bed and grabbed his tablet from the nightstand, even though the tracker still hadn’t moved.

“No,” Sam replied, swapping his sleep tank out for a clean t-shirt. “Other side of town.”

“Well, that’s something at least,” Steve said, reassured. He got out of bed and followed Sam downstairs, got the milk from the fridge as Sam poured a bowl of cereal. 

“Sorry,” Sam said through a mouthful of shredded wheat. 

“No,” Steve protested. “You need to go, keep your cover.”

Sam nodded, then went back to his breakfast.

“I’ll try again to get in touch with Nat, see if we can set up some remote surveillance,” Steve continued, thinking it out. “Then she can keep an eye on Marie while I talk to Don.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Sam asked. “To reveal yourself before we know who he’s working for?”

Steve saw Sam’s point, but it seemed better than waiting to see if Don was bluffing about taking Marie to HYDRA in roughly 16 hours. He said as much, while Sam drained the milk from his bowl and set it in the sink. 

“Okay,” Sam said, resigned but understanding. “Be careful,” he added, patting Steve’s arm as he passed, heading to the front closet for his gear bag.

Steve stopped him, though, grabbing his wrist. “Are you sure you can’t call in sick?” It was selfish of him to ask, but he couldn’t help it. 

Sam blinked, looked away. “What excuse could I give?” he countered. “Snyder told me two of the guys are already out with the flu, and we’re not a big group, Steve.”

“I know,” Steve said, because he did. But he held on a minute longer, then pulled Sam close and kissed him. 

“I’m just worried,” he added, half-smiling to show that he knew how dumb it was.

But Sam didn’t look like he thought it was dumb at all. “Me too,” he said. He kissed Steve again, a little more softly. “But I’ll be home in a few hours.”

“Okay,” Steve said, letting him go reluctantly. “Call me when you’re done?”

“Promise,” Sam answered him. Steve heard gravel crunch outside as Sam put on his boots and slung his bag over his shoulder. “See you in a bit,” he said, opening the door.

“Yeah,” said Steve. He’d never been good at goodbyes.

He tried to stay out of sight as Sam stepped outside. As much as he respected Sam’s captain, he really didn’t think the man needed to see him in his boxers. The second the door closed, Steve twitched aside the curtain and watched the truck pull away. It turned in the direction of town, and Steve listened until its engine faded out of range before he headed into the kitchen to rework his strategic options without Sam. 

The table was exactly how he’d left it three hours ago. His phone was still upstairs, so he opened his computer to see if Bucky or Natasha had checked in. He checked his email and discovered a message in his inbox from an address he didn’t recognize. With some trepidation, he opened it. 

_ Hey buddy, _

_ You’re never gonna believe this, but we were both wrong! Remember that song we were arguing about in your kitchen? Turns out it’s called “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.” Who knew? Guess that’s what we get for not having a proper Internet connection, huh? _

_ The trip was great, thanks for asking. Had an awesome time in Florida. Wifey says the four of us ought to grab a beer now that we’re back in town. And on that note, don’t you ever pick up the phone?? Or did that piece of shit Blackberry finally die on you? Been telling you for years, man, iPhone’s where it’s at. Get on the bandwagon! _

_ Call me about beers! Be great to see you and the hubby soon. _ _  
_ _ Jimmy _

It was either a mistake, or it was code, and Steve’s money was on the latter, since Bucky used to threaten to break the nose of anybody who called him Jimmy. “Wifey” probably meant Natasha, though Steve could easily picture  _ her _ breaking Buck’s nose for calling her that. “Back in town” was clear enough, though. 

There was a phone number under the signature that Steve had never seen before. It had a local area code — a burner, probably. And, reading the second paragraph again, Steve realized that Bucky was telling him to get one, too. And —  _ shit _ — that stuff about not having a proper Internet connection, did that mean they’d been hacked?

“Fuck,” he muttered. He read the cryptic email and the phone number twice more, until he was sure he’d committed it to memory, and then he unplugged everything. He found himself glancing out the windows furtively as he did so, and as soon as he was done, he hurried upstairs to get dressed, his mind still spinning.

“Arguing in my kitchen,” he mused aloud. “Two out of three ain’t bad. Two out of three....”

He shook his head, frustrated. He knew there had to be a meaning to the message, but pacing in his bedroom trying to figure it out wasn’t getting him anywhere. Plus, the house might be under surveillance or even bugged. They’d swept it last week, but they were out of the house often enough that it would be easy for someone to sneak onto their property and plant a parabolic mic in the trees or something.

Speaking of surveillance, he had to get eyes on Marie. With his connection compromised, he couldn’t access the tracker. Plus, he’d feel better being there in person. 

He bundled the papers off the table into a folder and tucked it under his arm. Then he did a patrol of the house, checking that the windows and doors were all locked. He tried, as he walked around, to see if there was anything that, to a casual observer, would declare his and Sam’s secret identities. He thought it looked pretty good, though he did grab his electronic shield generator and Sam’s wings out of the bedroom closet, just in case. He also took the emergency money he’d stored under the bathroom sink. 

It was a weirdly existential moment, closing and locking the front door behind him; it felt a bit like saying goodbye to a friend who’d passed away. Because this house — this life — could very well never be his again. Rob MacPherson, and his marriage to Marcus Rosewood, might cease to exist today, supplanted by Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson again. 

He stopped at the gas station on the outskirts of town to buy a new phone and the card to activate it. He didn’t recognize the kid behind the counter, and the kid didn’t seem to recognize him, either. He took Steve’s cash and told him to have a good day; Steve nodded in return and went back to the car. 

One more stop before he got to Jacob’s — the coffee shop. Steve needed some food, and he hoped that Miriam could give him an update on the fire. Lord knew she watched everything out the front window anyway. 

But when Steve asked if she’d seen the pumper truck go by, Miriam shot him a quizzical look. “No,” she said. “Why?”

Steve opened his mouth to tell her about Sam’s call, then thought twice. There were a few reasons she might not have seen the truck — they took an alternate route, maybe; Sam hadn’t specified the location, after all. Maybe it did go by, and Miriam just didn’t see it, though Steve doubted that. Or maybe — and this sent a chill down Steve’s spine — she was lying. 

“Fire crew’s doing a drill this morning,” he said, when he realized that too much time had elapsed since her question.

“Oh,” Miriam answered, looking relieved. “Good. We like to have those boys on their toes.”

“For sure,” Steve agreed. He made himself release the tension that was creeping into his shoulders and smiled, hoping it looked at least a little genuine. “Thanks,” he added, when Miriam handed him his coffee and a breakfast sandwich that he now wasn’t sure he’d be able to eat, anxious and paranoid as he felt.

“Any time,” said Miriam. Steve told himself there was nothing suspicious in the fact that she normally said  _ You’re welcome, _ and headed back to the car. 

He suppressed the desire to call Sam right away — it was way too risky, given what Bucky had just told him about their communications — and instead drove as fast as he legally could to get to Jacob’s street. 

Steve passed Jacob’s house, relieved to see that his truck was right where it was last night, and parked at the end of the street. He connected his new phone to the tracker’s app, and it took forty-five agonizing seconds to hone in on the signal — a few hundred feet away, blinking steadily.

Steve let himself exhale and take a sip of his coffee before he started typing out a message to the number that Bucky had sent him. 

_ Hey Jimmy, _ he wrote. It felt completely ridiculous, but Bucky was the one who’d picked this code.

He waited a moment, but there was no reply. Steve tapped his toes against the inside of his boots. He wasn’t sure what to say next. He wanted to ask about the “two out of three” thing, but he couldn’t think of a way to say it that wouldn’t give him away if this phone fell into enemy hands. He’d never been very good at this spy thing. 

_ Maybe we could do brunch instead of beers? _ he wrote finally.  _ It’ll have to be three of us, though. My better half is working. _

That was okay, he thought. Vague but not too vague, and it told Bucky that he wanted to meet up soon. He sent the message, and while he was waiting for an answer, he leaned back in his seat and opened up the sandwich he’d bought. 

The unfamiliar chime of the burner phone startled Steve a few bites later. He looked down and read Bucky’s one-word reply:  _ Where? _

Steve frowned. It was a valid question. Where could they meet that wouldn’t attract the attention of this town’s many nosey neighbors? Not for the first time, Steve missed the size and anonymity of New York. 

Luckily, he didn’t have to answer, because Bucky sent a follow-up message a second later that made Steve’s worries irrelevant.  _ I mean, where’s the other half working? _

_ Don’t know, _ Steve answered honestly.  _ Got a call and went with the captain. _

He sent the message, but immediately questioned doing so. Was that too much information?

_ Okay. Wifey’s busy, _ Bucky replied.  _ Just you and me? _

_ Sure, _ said Steve, though that still didn’t solve the problem of where they’d meet.

He waited, but Bucky didn’t send him an address. He didn’t send anything, which worried Steve. He shifted in his seat impatiently — he wasn’t very good at recon , but he forced himself to focus and keep a close eye on Jacob’s house. 

Almost an hour later, nothing had changed. Some of Jacob’s neighbors left, a few people walked their dogs down the sidewalk. No one gave Steve’s car a second glance. He watched and waited, waited and watched, fighting off the fatigue that was starting to creep up on him. 

Suddenly, the passenger door opened, and someone entered the car in a blur of grey motion. 

“What the—” Steve exclaimed before his brain caught up, and he realized who it was.

“Shh,” Bucky said. He was sweeping the interior of the car with a blinking device in his left hand. With his right, he tapped the center of his ear and nodded. “Clear,” he said a second later. 

“Hi,” said Steve, because he never knew what to say when Bucky made an entrance like this. 

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky replied. 

“What?”

“Why in God’s name would you let Sam out of your sight when you know we’re facing a hostile threat?” Bucky demanded.

A wave of defensive anger rose in Steve’s throat. “Okay, for starters, I don’t  _ let _ Sam do anything,” he argued. “Sam’s a grown man and he makes his own decisions.”

“All right, but—”

“And secondly,” Steve continued, overriding him. “You’re the one who didn’t bother to answer us until this morning, even though we told you it was an emergency.”

“I was  _ busy,” _ Bucky explained, “trying to—” 

“Not to mention your message didn’t even make sense,” Steve finished stubbornly. He knew he was being petty, but the drive to win arguments against Bucky was older than a lot of his better instincts. “Two out of three ain’t bad, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means there’s another HYDRA operative in town,” Bucky answered in a raised voice. “Somebody we didn’t know about. And they’re onto us,” he added more quietly. “Right after we got Sam’s message last night, Tasha detected a breach in our security. Five minutes later, we had nothing.”

“So we were hacked,” Steve summarized. He’d suspected as much from the email, but it was still a bit of a surprise. 

“More than just that,” Bucky went on. “They released a worm into our system to cover their tracks, so we can’t tell how much data was stolen and how much was just corrupted.”

“Dammit,” Steve swore under his breath. 

“The scary part is that the worm came so soon after we noticed.” 

“Meaning?” Steve prompted, dreading the answer.

Bucky sighed, sounding old and tired. “Meaning that whoever hacked us was listening in on our conversations, and they waited until we noticed the breach to send out the virus.”

“Why?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” said Bucky. “But I get the feeling that whoever did this has been onto us for a while.”

Steve nodded grimly. “Any way for Nat to trace the leak?”

“Negative,” Bucky said, flat and robotic. Then he twitched. “Sorry,” he added. 

“It’s okay,” Steve said quickly. He knew it upset Bucky when his brain did that, and it was best not to dwell. “If your place was bugged, then ours probably was, too.”

“Unfortunately,” Bucky agreed. 

“All right,” said Steve, reaching a decision after a moment’s thought. “I’m going to go and find Sam. I need you to stay here and keep an eye on—”

“Wait,” Bucky hissed, and pointed out the windshield. Steve looked, and saw Jacob come out of the house, Marie almost literally in tow. He opened the passenger side door of the truck, but she didn’t climb in. 

“But Dad,” Steve heard her say.

Jacob paused, stroked her hair. He said something too quiet for Steve to hear, with the glass and distance between them. Marie got in the truck.

Jacob closed the door and looked furtively around. His eyes landed on Steve, and Steve saw him panic.

“Shit,” said Steve, as Jacob practically leapt into his truck and started the engine. 

“Think he recognized you?” Bucky asked dryly. 

Steve shot him a dirty look as he pulled away from the curb, but Bucky had a point. Jacob didn’t know who they were, but if he could tell Steve was conducting surveillance... and given the way Steve had walked Marie home last night, it was probably a reasonable for Jacob to think that Rob MacPherson was in league with Don, sent to collect Marie for HYDRA.

Steve realized with a pang of guilt that the truth about his identity — the one thing that would make Jacob trust him — was also the one thing Steve had asked Marie not to share with him. 

“Where is he going?” Bucky asked, as Jacob passed the town limits and turned left down a dirt road. 

“Anywhere to get away from me,” Steve answered, waiting for the meagre oncoming traffic to clear before chasing him. 

He had to put the brakes on almost immediately— Jacob’s truck was suddenly  _ crawling. _

“What the hell,” Bucky growled. “Want me to run out and jump in the truck bed?”

Steve was pretty sure Bucky was kidding, but just in case— “No,” he said firmly. 

As the houses thinned out around them, leaving just trees and dead-looking corn, Steve realized with a start that he knew this area, though he didn’t come here often. They were on the road that led west out of town, past the scrap yard and over the—

“Train tracks,” Steve breathed, even as he heard the whistle. 

At once, Jacob accelerated, kicking up a spray of dust that obscured Steve’s vision and stones that plinked off the windshield. He pressed the gas pedal to the floor, but Jacob had a few seconds’ lead to start with, and he was quickly getting further ahead, closer and closer to the train signal, which was already chiming, its bright red lights flashing. At this remote crossing, there were no barriers, and Steve saw what Jacob was planning to do.

“No. No, no, no,” Steve chanted under his breath. He pressed the gas pedal flat, urging the car to catch up, to stop Jacob from doing something so stupid and reckless.

“Steve,” Bucky warned as the tracks grew nearer.

“I know,” said Steve.

“Steve,” Bucky said again more urgently. 

“I know!”

Jacob’s truck soared over the tracks. The train took its place a second later, and Steve slammed on the brakes and yanked the wheel hard to the right, swerving into and out of a shallow ditch before spinning to a stop in the middle of a muddy field.

“Dammit!” Steve smacked his hand against the dashboard, hard enough that he heard something in the plastic crack. 

“You can say that again,” Bucky mumbled. He picked up Steve’s phone, which had clattered to the floor during the chase. “At least she’s got the tracker. We can catch up.”

“Good,” Steve said, opening his door. The clatter of the train increased in volume. “There’s another crossing half a mile down.”

They climbed out of the car, and Steve made a slight sound of disgust as his boots immediately sank half an inch into the ground. He and Bucky set about freeing the car from the mud, and while they worked, Steve told him about his conversation with Marie and what he’d overheard last night.

“Jacob must have thought we were HYDRA, too,” he concluded. “He wouldn’t take a risk like that without a good reason.”

“People don’t always need reasons to take risks,” Bucky argued. “Look at your dumb ass for instance.”

Steve scowled but chose not to comment, instead focusing on getting the car to the edge of the field. “Maybe Don was leaning on him some more. Maybe he called this morning and upped the ante.”

“Maybe,” said Bucky.

“Or maybe it was our mystery agent,” said Steve with a final shove. They’d reached the lip of the ditch, so he circled around to the back bumper. “Ready?” 

Bucky blew out a sharp breath and brushed his hair away from his face. “Yep. One, two—”

Steve lifted the back end while Bucky lifted the front, and between the two of them they managed to get the car over the deepest part of the gap. Bucky held it in place with his left arm, stopping it from rolling back down the hill, while Steve hurried back to the front. They pushed together until the back tires reached the gravel shoulder. One more shove, and they were back on the road, muddy but no worse for wear. 

Steve climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He winced when the clock in the dashboard lit up; they’d lost more time than he’d realized. He pulled a U-turn at the tracks — the train was going very slow, and it still looked miles long — while Bucky pulled out the burner phone and checked the tracker again. 

“Can you call Sam, please?” Steve asked him anxiously. 

“Sure, I’ll— wait,” Bucky interrupted himself. 

“What?” Steve said, slowing down. 

“No, keep going,” Bucky said quickly. “The tracker went dead.”

Steve turned his head sharply. “Just now?”

“Yep.”

Steve accelerated. The end of the train was almost at the next crossing. “Call Sam.”

“On it.” Steve waited, his fingers drumming the wheel impatiently, but only a second later, Bucky pulled the phone away from his ear. “His phone’s off.”

“I don’t like this,” Steve declared. “He should have been in contact by now.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed.

He didn’t say anything more, but he didn’t really have to. Steve turned onto another dirt road and pressed down hard on the accelerator, coaxing as much speed from the engine as he dared. 

He only hoped it would be enough. 


	10. Chapter 10

The tracker’s last blip before it lost signal led them to the county sheriff’s station. To Steve’s relief, Jacob’s truck was still there, parked askew in the dirt lot. There were obvious tracks from another vehicle as well, and — Steve’s heart contracted in his chest — a frenzy of footprints and drag marks all around them. 

“Come on,” said Bucky, checking his pistol. “You got your shield?”

“Yeah,” Steve answered, the question jolting him into motion. 

He took Sam’s wings out of the backseat along with his shield generator. He shook himself back to reality and strapped Sam’s wings on his shoulders for safe keeping. At a nod from Bucky, he activated his shield and led the way inside. 

The second the door opened, Steve knew something was very wrong: the interior lights were off, and he could smell blood. A quiet shuffle, coming from one of the holding cells in the back, cut out as soon as Bucky closed the door behind them. He signalled to Steve that he was going that way; Steve nodded. 

Bucky branched off while Steve rounded the end of the front counter. Behind it, he found one of the sheriff’s deputies lying in a pool of blood, a neat bullet hole in his forehead. Steve grimaced at the sight and bent down to close the deputy’s shocked eyes. He didn’t know the man personally, but in a town this small, he was a familiar enough face. 

Bucky called his name from the back. Steve jogged to the holding cells immediately and found Bucky crouched over someone seated on the floor with one of his wrists handcuffed to the frame of the cot. His head lolled against the mattress. It was Jacob. 

“He’s been drugged,” Bucky said. He pulled a penlight from his pocket and forced open one of Jacob’s eyes to shine it in his pupil. 

Jacob made a sound of protest and his legs scrabbled weakly against the cement floor like he was trying to get away from the light. Steve searched, found the handcuff keys hanging outside the cell, and knelt down to unlock Jacob’s wrist.

“Jacob,” he said softly, “can you hear me?”

Jacob groaned again, but it almost sounded like a word. 

“Jacob?” Steve repeated. 

“Marcus,” Jacob slurred, his eyelids fluttering. 

Steve’s heart rate picked up, his stomach started to writhe like he’d swallowed snakes. “He was here?”

Jacob’s head dipped, rolled back, and dipped again — a dizzying attempt at a nod. “Falcon.”

A chill fell down Steve’s spine. He was moving before he realized it, getting back to his feet and deactivating the shield, pulling his phone out of his pocket and dialling without seeing the numbers. 

From a distance he heard Bucky talking to Jacob, but the line was ringing in his ear. Sam was going to pick up this time, he had to, he was okay, Steve was going to hear his voice— any second now. 

Finally, the line connected, but the man who spoke wasn’t Sam. “About time you called,” he said, dragging the words out like a lazy afternoon. 

Steve gritted his teeth. “Who is this?”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” the man asked instead of answering. “I left him alive, I think. Can’t be too sure. The drug’s new, you see. We were working on it for you, but George— oh, I’m sorry, what do you call him, Jacob? We decided he’d do as a test subject for now.”

Bucky handed Steve a small device with a connecting cable. He plugged it in, and Bucky opened and closed his metal hand like a mouth talking. _Trace,_ he mouthed. 

Steve nodded. “I take it I have you to thank for the dead deputy, too?”

The man laughed, a harsh rasp in Steve’s ear. “Oh, you are quick, aren’t you? Should’ve known I couldn’t pull one over on you.”

“Where’s Sam?” Steve demanded. 

“I gotta give you credit,” the man continued blithely. Steve thought the voice sounded somewhat familiar, though he couldn’t place it. “You almost had me. Big old beard, I hardly knew you. But then I saw your—” He huffed out a loud breath. “Excuse me, your _husband_ with that Clark Kent nonsense. Did you really think a pair of glasses would make me forget the best damn pilot I ever saw?”

That caught Steve’s attention — not only the history he’d just revealed, but the way that he seemed to accidentally address Sam directly. Sam was with him, wherever he was.

Steve didn’t allow himself to react. It took effort to stay calm when everything in him was screaming for a fight, but Steve drew a breath and steadied himself. He needed to stay on the phone long enough for Bucky’s hardware to complete the trace.

“But I’m getting off-topic now,” the man said. “What I wanted to tell you was that I’ve got the girl. And you’re gonna let me take her home.”

“You’re not taking anyone anywhere,” Steve said, every syllable a threat.

“She’s ready to join the family,” the man went on, like Steve hadn’t spoken. “We’ve been waiting and waiting, and now you’ll finally get to see what she can do with our help.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“It’ll kill your birdman,” the HYDRA agent said, and Steve’s heart stopped. 

“Collateral damage, I guess you could say,” the agent went on when Steve didn’t speak. “Nothing to be done about it.”

Steve’s jaw was starting to ache from being clenched so tightly. “I’m gonna find you,” he declared.

“Oh, I know,” said the other man, unconcerned. “Why do you think I’m letting your buddy trace this call?”

Steve met Bucky’s eyes, alarmed. Bucky had gone very pale. Steve’s hand holding the phone shook slightly. 

“You see,” the HYDRA agent continued, “I know him pretty well. I knew that all I had to do was lay down a trail, leak the right intel to the right people, and he’d lap it up. Came running straight to you, didn’t he? Like the good little dog we trained him to be. Tell him we miss his dedication over here.”

“You son of a bitch,” Steve swore.

The HYDRA agent laughed again, louder this time. “He’s not the only predictable one. I tapped your phone ages ago, heard you tell your sweetheart you’d be walking home last night. Then I told my agents to raise the stakes with the girl. You just can’t resist a kitten in a tree, can you, Cap?”

Steve closed his eyes, frustrated and angry with himself. The trap was so clear now — Don had aggravated him from day one, making Steve more inclined to rush into action against him the minute he threatened Jacob and Marie. Steve had run right into it, he’d thought he could handle it, and he’d fucked up. He’d overlooked the danger that had been hiding in Don’s shadow all along. 

Because it was clear now who the third player was. Sam had gotten into a vehicle with him willingly just a few hours ago. 

“Snyder,” Steve growled. 

“There you go,” said the fire captain. “Glad you finally caught up to the rest of us.”

“If you hurt a hair on Sam’s head,” Steve threatened, “I will make you regret every decision you’ve ever made.” 

“Ha!” Snyder exclaimed. “There’s the star-spangled arrogance that the people know and love. I knew you still had it in you.”

Snyder’s delight only pissed Steve off more. “It’s not arrogance when I know I’m right.”

“Oho,” Snyder chuckled. “I’ve got you all riled up, haven’t I?” 

“That’s what happens when you threaten people I love.” 

“Oh, now that’s kind of sweet,” Snyder cooed. “And here I thought the marriage was all an act. That’ll give me and Sam here something to talk about for his last few minutes on earth. Goodbye now, Captain.”

“Snyder—” Steve began, but Snyder had already hung up. 

Steve very nearly threw his phone against the concrete wall. “Please tell me you got a location,” he said to Bucky instead.

“It pinged off a cell tower three miles to the southeast,” Bucky confirmed, “but there aren’t a lot of towers out here, so that doesn’t really narrow it down.”

Steve started to pace, his heart picking up speed like a runaway train. “Have you got satellite imagery?”

“Getting it now,” said Bucky, tapping on his tablet. “Got it.”

Steve hurried over to him, and together they scanned the pictures. It was a whole lot of nothing except squared-off pieces of land. A few barns and homesteads were scattered over the landscape, cut off from the fields by blurry fences and dark hedgerows. Snyder could have taken Sam literally anywhere. 

“That looks like a store or something,” Bucky commented, pointing at something with his metal finger. “Zoom in there.”

Steve did. It was indeed a little store, with four white gas pumps out front. “That’s it,” he said, his hope rushing back. “That’s where they are.”

He took the tablet out of Bucky’s hands and strode away, all the while programming the GPS to take him to those coordinates. 

“How do you know?” Bucky asked, following him with quick footsteps. “Steve!”

“Gas is flammable,” Steve replied shortly. He shoved open the door and headed straight for the car. 

“Steve, wait,” Bucky called after him. He grabbed Steve’s arm as he reached for the driver’s door handle. “Will you listen to me? Stop. Think. This could be another trap.” 

Steve shook his head. “It’s not. I know they’re there.”

“How?” Bucky demanded. “How do you know?”

Steve thought for a moment. Something was niggling at him, something about the gas pumps, and the call with Snyder. He knew something, but he didn’t know how. Then it hit him.

“I heard the bell,” he said. “In the background, I could hear the signal bell, like someone was stepping on the hose, over and over again.”

Bucky stared at him for just one second, and then he moved aside. “Go,” he said. “Go fast.”


	11. Chapter 11

Steve drove with the gas pedal flat against the floor and ran every stop sign. He was still too late.

A few dozen yards from the station, he slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car and ran. He had just enough time to notice that, in this rusty, overgrown place, a six-inch section of the signal hose was completely free of dust and dirt. 

Then, the building exploded. 

In a fraction of a second, Steve crouched, activating his shield and expanding it to a dome that covered his entire body. Still, the force of the bomb rocked him on his ass, and the shield was no protection against the heat. He could smell the hair on his arms and face singeing. 

When the dust had settled, the store was a burned-out husk with chunks of the walls and ceiling caved in, but the gas pumps were still intact. Burning pieces of paper rained down around him. The light posts above the pumps creaked ominously while the wires shot sparks onto the pavement below.

“Which is bad, Rogers,” Steve reminded himself as he got to his feet. The pumps could go up at any moment; he had to move. 

But Sam might still be here, and he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t at least try to rescue— recover— 

No. Sam was fine. Steve couldn’t let himself think otherwise as he shrank the shield again and headed for what remained of the building.

“Sam?” he called. “Sam, can you hear me? Sam!”

He shifted pieces of concrete as large as his torso and tossed them aside. His ears, still ringing, were strained, listening for the faintest sound of another person in the vicinity, even the smallest cry for help. 

He’d moved nearly half of the building’s remnants before he saw it: a silvery glint in one corner by the burned-out ice cream cooler. He bent to get a closer look, and his eyes welled up. 

It was the tiny version of his shield that Marie had on her keyring. The one that she’d hit him with— was that just last night? He rubbed his palm; it was still a bit itchy with healing. He’d told her to keep it, that she needed it more, and now it had failed her, just as he had. 

“Sam,” he said again, but it wasn’t a shout, it was a sigh. “Where are you?”

He’d been through enough of the building now to know that it was empty when it blew. If Sam had been here — if Marie had been here — he would’ve found something bigger than a keychain. 

He made his way to the back of the building, away from the still-volatile gas pumps. He stepped outside, blinking in the sunlight, and looked back. And then— 

“Need a medic?” said a quiet and achingly familiar voice from behind him. 

“Sam,” Steve gasped. He whirled around and closed the space between them. He pulled Sam into his arms and kissed him, squeezing as tight as he dared. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “But the building’s still burning. We gotta get out of here in case there’s another explosion.”

“Right,” Steve replied, shaken but accepting Sam’s logic. “Okay. Come on.”

He wrapped an arm around Sam’s shoulder, and they put almost a hundred yards between them and the gas station before Steve heard a low, ominous rumble. He scooped Sam up immediately and ran at top speed. When the noise behind them began to peak, he skidded to a halt, put himself between Sam and the building, and threw up his shield again. 

The explosion was a cacophony of noise and smoke. Each of the four tanks blew, one after another, collapsing what remained of the store and knocking down hydro poles on both sides of the road. 

“Well, fuck,” Sam muttered behind him, once the noise had faded. 

Steve deactivated the shield, then turned and looked at Sam closely for the first time. The first thing he noticed was the bruise, ugly and purple under his right eye. There was also a small bleeding gash along his hairline, and his bottom lip was split. 

“I’ll kill Snyder for what he did to you,” Steve vowed.

Sam nodded. “I know. But priorities, baby. We gotta get Marie back first.”

“What the hell happened?” Steve asked. “How’d we miss this?”

Sam shrugged, but he winced with the movement. “He’s sneaky, that’s how. I think he’s been planning this for a while.”

“Bastard,” Steve muttered. 

“Yeah. He pulled a gun on me the minute I got in the truck,” Sam reported. “Took my phone, tied me up, brought me to the sheriff’s station.”

“And then, did he...?” Steve trailed off, indicating Sam’s injuries.

Sam shook his head, his tongue touching his bottom lip gingerly. “His goons met us there. He said I was practice.”

Steve clenched his fists, then felt the small shield bend in his hand and remembered.  _ Priorities. _ “Did you see Jacob, or Marie?”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Snyder said he’d lured them, just like he lured you, and sure enough they came through the door a minute later. They caught Jacob by surprise, I think he was expecting someone else.” Sam’s eyes went huge suddenly. “They drugged him with something, did you find him? Do you know if he’s okay?”

“He’s all right,” Steve reassured him. “He’s kinda loopy, but he’s okay. Bucky’s with him.”

“Thank God,” Sam said, quiet but fervent. “How’d you know how to find me?”

“Bucky traced the signal to a cell tower nearby, and when I heard the bell, I knew it had to be a gas station of some kind.”

Sam nodded. “When you called,” he explained, “Snyder got his guys to take Marie outside. I could see her through the window. She tripped over the bell hose and, between her and guards, they must have stepped on it a hundred times.”

“Smart kid,” Steve observed.

“Yeah.” Sam rubbed at his nose, then winced where it was obviously tender. “His guys set the bomb up just inside the door,” he explained. “Then Snyder got something else out of the truck. It was— it looked like a giant, gaudy necklace or something.”

“A necklace?” Steve repeated, baffled.

“Something like that. I didn’t get a good look,” Sam admitted, “but it had a big circle on it. Like a stone, but metal. He put it around Marie’s neck.”

“Huh,” said Steve. He’d have to ask Bucky if it sounded like any HYDRA device he knew. “What did it do?”

Sam shrugged. “Hell if I know. I wasn’t really in a position to be asking a lot of questions.”

“Fair enough,” Steve said. “How’d you get away?”

“Marie,” Sam said simply, with a smile that drew a drop of blood from his split bottom lip. “She touched my ropes, way back at the sheriff’s station, and I just held them together until he left.”

“Lucky the bomb was on a long timer,” Steve murmured, rubbing at Sam’s chafed wrists. 

Sam nodded. “Yeah. I think he wanted to wait for you. So he could...”

They’d reached what was left of the gas station, and Sam trailed off, looking around at the debris. 

“What?” Steve asked.

“Snyder said this would be a test run, that he wanted the world to watch. I thought maybe he’d set some cameras up, but I don’t see any.”

“Even if there were, I don’t think they’d have survived,” Steve said, taking a glance himself. 

“True,” Sam conceded. He sighed and waved a hand at the destruction all around them. “Poor kid.”

“Yeah,” said Steve, a completely inadequate syllable for the storm of thoughts running through his head. He kept hearing, again and again, his conversation with Marie last night. She didn’t want to hurt anyone with her powers, but here they were. 

“Fucking HYDRA,” he muttered after a moment, and Sam huffed out something like a laugh. 

“Come on, let’s get outta here,” he said. “We’ve got to get back to the sheriff’s station, see how Jacob’s doing. We can regroup with Bucky and plan our next move.”

Sam nodded, but when they got to the road, they could see that the car was not an option. A hydro pole had fallen straight down the middle, shattering the windshield and crumpling the hood. 

“Well, I guess we’re walking,” Steve said. 

“Walking?” Sam thumped the wings on Steve’s back. “You forget about these?” 

“Yes, actually,” Steve chuckled. He started to take them off, but Sam held up a hand and stopped him. 

“I can’t,” he said. “I think I’ve got a broken rib, and my shoulder’s not great, either. No way I can fly and carry you. You’ll have to do it.”

Steve stared. “I don’t know how.”

Sam grinned, bright despite the circumstances and his injuries. “I’ll steer you around the curves, baby, now, give me that shield. We’ve got a day to save.”

Steve didn’t think he’d ever been more in love.


	12. Chapter 12

Natasha’s zippy little Kawasaki pulled into the parking lot while Steve was circling low over the sheriff’s station in preparation to land. He tried not to pay attention when she stepped off the bike and looked up, shielding her eyes with one hand to watch them.

“That’s it,” Sam reassured him. “A little lower, watch for the updraft. Ease off the thrusters, there you go. Almost there now.”

When they finally touched down a minute later, Steve barely resisted the urge to kiss the ground. Flying really wasn't for him. He took off the wings immediately, and Sam handed him the electronic shield generator. 

“Well, this is a change of pace,” Natasha observed, walking up to them. “I had no idea you two were so... versatile.”

Steve’s cheeks went hot — he knew why she’d chosen that word — but Sam just laughed and pulled Nat into a quick, one-armed hug. “Nice to see you, wish the circumstances were better.”

“Me too,” she replied. “We’ve got a problem.”

“You mean, other than Snyder?” Steve asked, while Nat loaded something on her phone.

“No,” she said shortly, and she turned the screen in Steve and Sam’s direction. 

The video showed booted feet against a dark floor. The footage was shaky, clearly shot with a smartphone. Excited male voices mumbled in the background until one cut through the noise. 

“The window,” Snyder said. “Make sure you don’t miss it.”

The camera panned left, blurring over the walls of what looked like a cargo van, until it stabilized, pointing out a streaked window. Steve’s breath caught in his throat when he realized he recognized the scene — it was the gas station that he’d just left. 

“Ready,” said the guy holding the camera.

“Then let's go,” said someone else. 

The engine revved to life, and the van drove away. It stopped about a half-mile down the road, in the opposite direction that Steve had come from. Steve didn’t remember seeing the vehicle, but he was also pretty focused on finding Sam and Marie at the time. 

“What is this?” he asked.

“Wait for it,” Natasha answered. 

Steve watched the distant shape of a person — himself — run towards the gas station. From the point of view of the camera, he wasn’t recognizable.

Seconds later, the gas station exploded — the camera and the van rocked with the impact, and the goons in the vehicle whooped in celebration. Steve looked for the blue-white flicker of his shield, but the camera had followed the flames up into the sky, and it didn’t look back down. 

“You see?” Snyder gloated, over the laughter of his men. “We ain’t dead. We ain’t even wounded. And you have no idea what we’re capable of. Hail HYDRA.”

“Hail HYDRA!” the men in the van echoed as one. 

Snyder laughed, and the screen went black. 

“This hit the Internet less than an hour ago,” Natasha explained. “It’s trending on social media, and news networks have started to catch up. They’re playing it on almost every channel.”

“Shit,” said Sam. 

“Yeah,” Nat agreed. “Stark’s working on a statement, something from the Avengers—”

“The Avengers?” Steve echoed, thrown. “I thought the Avengers didn’t exist anymore.”

Nat hesitated, clearly caught out. “The public doesn’t need to know that,” she said finally.

Steve felt his nostrils flare. Sam put a hand on his forearm, reminding him that they had bigger priorities, not the least of which were Sam’s injuries. 

“Come on,” he said. “We can talk about this inside.”

They headed to the building, Steve taking some of Sam’s weight as they crossed the uneven gravel of the parking lot. Bucky met them at the door, giving Natasha a light kiss on the cheek before squeezing Sam’s shoulder gently. 

“You all right, Wilson?”

Sam nodded. Steve stepped around the counter to get the first aid kit he’d seen earlier, but he didn’t need to — the medical supplies were already laid out waiting for him.

“I figured you might need them,” Bucky explained. 

“Thanks,” said Steve. He pointed Sam towards a bench in the lobby, then went back for bandages. “How’s Jacob?”

“I’m all right, Cap,” said a voice from behind him. 

Steve turned, and found Jacob leaning on the doorframe to one of the offices. He looked exhausted but otherwise okay. He stuck out his hand, and Steve shook it. 

“Nice to meet you, officially,” he said with a wan smile. “I’m George.”

“Steve,” said Steve. “Glad to see you’re all right.”

Jacob — George — nodded, but he looked down, avoiding Steve’s eye. A somewhat awkward silence fell between them. Out of habit, Steve stuck his hands into his pockets. He was surprised when his fingers touched something warm and metallic. 

He pulled out Marie’s shield keychain and handed it to her father. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could’ve gotten there in time.”

“Yeah,” said George. “I wish I’d never brought her here.”

“Snyder tricked you?” Steve guessed.

George nodded. “I got a call, first thing this morning. It was— or, well, I thought it was my wife.”

Steve’s eyebrows shot up, surprised to hear that he'd been onto something last night after all. Knowing how long it took George to open up, Steve waited for him to continue, but Natasha didn’t.

“Bonita Juarez,” she said. “Former SHIELD, Level 9. Took me a while to track down her file.”

George smiled faintly. “That’s because she erased it.”

Natasha’s lips quirked up. “I noticed.”

“Why’d she do that?” Sam asked.

Steve finished getting the bandages and sat down beside Sam to start addressing his injuries. George sighed and leaned against the front counter — the deputy’s body had been moved, but the floor was still stained beneath George’s feet. 

“Bonnie found out about HYDRA in SHIELD before anyone else did,” George began. “Sitwell told her. They were friends, once, and I guess he wanted to bring her in. When she didn’t go for it, he set his sights on her.”

“Was it because of Marie’s powers?” Sam asked through a wince — Steve was swabbing at the gash on his forehead with an alcohol wipe. “Was that why he asked?”

“Yeah,” George confirmed. “He thought Sofia’s fire abilities could fix the problems with the Centipede formula.”

“Centipede?” Nat repeated, sounding startled. The word meant nothing to Steve, but he knew it was serious — nothing startled Natasha Romanov. 

“Yeah,” said George. “That was when we decided to leave,” he went on. “We knew we couldn’t keep Sofia safe anymore. Not with the doctors and Sitwell breathing down our necks.”

“Marie— sorry, Sofia — told me what happened when she had surgery on her appendix,” Steve said. George looked up, surprised, but he didn’t interrupt. “And I found the formal reprimand that Sitwell gave Bonita not long afterwards.”

George nodded. “When Bonnie turned him down, Sitwell saw her as a threat. She knew his secret, and he was convinced that she would use it against him. He wanted her gone.”

“But he couldn’t tell anyone why without throwing his own loyalty into question,” Natasha mused.

“Exactly,” said George. “So we started making plans to get out. Then, when you brought HYDRA to light, we took advantage of the opportunity, and we ran. Ever since, I’ve tried to keep a low profile, make sure people don’t notice Sofia’s abilities, but it hasn’t been easy.”

“Where’s Bonita now?” Natasha asked. 

“I don’t know,” said George. “We decided it’d be too conspicuous, the three of us going together, so Bonnie went her own way. She didn’t know where we were, we didn’t know where she was, but every few weeks we’d check in.” 

“When’s the last time you heard from her?” Sam asked gently.

“Over a month ago,” said George. “So when she called this morning, I believed her. She said we had to meet up, that our cover’d been blown, and that you—” he pointed to Steve— “were working with Don to get us back. Sofia told me otherwise, but I believed Bonnie over her. I made the wrong call.” He dropped his gaze to the floor. “I panicked. And now they’ve got her.” 

“Don’t blame yourself,” Sam said. “None of us saw this coming.”

“What are they going to do with her?” George asked, his voice shaking like Steve had never heard it before. “Will they kill her?”

“No,” Bucky said quietly. Everyone turned to him, but his eyes stayed focused on something far away. “Right now, HYDRA’s in shambles. Nobody’s really in charge since the heads got cut off. Snyder probably thinks that if can prove himself, he can score the top job.”

“And the video he released is the first step,” Nat put in. “He’s showing that he’s a player, that he’s got a weapon nobody else does.”

“Weapon?” George repeated. “You don’t mean...”

“I’m afraid so,” said Sam. 

A tense silence fell between them. Steve finished with the medical supplies, thinking back to that late summer evening when Sam had suggested that maybe the girl they’d seen during the town hall meeting had superpowers. That felt like a lifetime ago now, and he so wished that Sam had been wrong.

“She’s so powerful,” George said after a minute. “It frightens me, to see what she can do.”

There was another pause while George traced the edges of the shield keychain with his fingers. Last night, in Sofia’s hands, the metal had been hot enough to burn, to injure. Maybe even kill. 

“Do you know how she got her powers?” Bucky asked finally. “Was it the super soldier serum they gave you?”

“No,” said George with certainty. 

Steve waited, but George didn’t elaborate. Finally, he asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” George replied. 

Natasha narrowed her eyes. “How do you know?” 

“Where do you think they took her?” George asked, evading the question. 

Steve and Natasha shared a look. Bucky shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Sam frowned.

“George, if you’re not telling us everything,” he began.

“We can’t protect you if we don’t know the truth,” said Steve, picking up the thread where Sam left it.

When George still didn’t answer, Natasha sighed softly. “I find it hard to believe that you were able to disappear so completely, and so quickly,” she stated. There was nothing accusatory in her tone, but the dots were easy enough to connect. 

“It’s really best that you tell us everything you know,” Bucky added.

George’s eyes were on the floor. He drew in a breath, paused, then shook his head. “I—” he began.

A shrill alarm cut him off. In a flash, Bucky had drawn his pistol, and Steve’s shield was up. Natasha, however, was digging in her bag. 

“It’s all right,” she said, extracting the device that was making the noise and silencing it at once. “I got Fitz-Simmons to rig something up that might help us.”

“What is it?” Steve asked.

“I had them analyze the data from the explosion and compare it to the fires that we know Sofia started,” said Nat. 

“So, the house fire from a year ago and the ambulance,” Steve interrupted. “She didn’t cause the second house fire.”

“She didn’t?” said George and Sam together.

“She didn’t,” Nat confirmed. “Turns out it had a completely different heat signature. It ignited with the same speed, but it burned slower and at a lower temperature.”

“What caused it if it wasn’t her?” George asked. 

“Gasoline,” Natasha replied, matter-of-fact. “Plain old arson. Three guesses who.”

“Snyder was first on the scene,” Sam muttered darkly. 

“And Don was late for work that day,” Steve remembered. “But why?” 

“My guess,” said Nat, “is that HYDRA was testing her. Trying to see how much smoke inhalation and heat exposure she could stand, so they could get better specs for putting her in the field.”

“That’s sadistic,” Sam spat, but Steve looked at Bucky and didn’t doubt it.

“Fitz-Simmons identified the distinct patterns of heat that Sofia gives off when she uses her powers,” Natasha went on. She held up the small device, which was still blinking. “And this means we’ve got a hit.” 

“So we have to go,” said George. “She’s out there, we have to find her.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, “but you’re not going anywhere.”

“What?” cried George. “That’s my daughter, you’re not keeping me from her.”

“Then tell us what you know,” Bucky countered. 

“Guys,” Natasha interrupted. “Can we hold the pissing contest until after we catch the bad guys?”

Steve looked at George’s distraught face. Despite his shady response to Bucky’s questions, Steve’s gut still told him that George was a victim, that he wasn’t in league with HYDRA. But what if he was wrong? He’d been wrong before — Snyder was all the proof he needed of that. 

He glanced at Sam, looking as ever for his input before making a decision. Sam nodded, and that cemented it; Steve nodded back.

“Nat’s right,” Steve told Bucky, who backed down but didn’t look happy about it. “We’re bringing him with us.”

“You’re bringing him,” Bucky corrected him. “Tasha, send me the last known coordinates. I can get there faster on your bike.”

“Please, Natasha, great love of my life, may I borrow your motorcycle?” Nat said mockingly, even as she worked the device with her thumbs. “Of course, sweet James! Why, thank you for asking so nicely.”

Bucky’s phone dinged in his pocket, and he strode towards the door, only stopping to grab the keys and kiss Nat’s cheek on the way by. “You’re the best,” he told her in an undertone.

“I know,” Nat replied.

“Stay on your radio,” Steve called after him, and Bucky half-saluted over his shoulder.

“How are we gonna get there?” George asked, somewhat meekly.

“I saw a Sheriff’s Department SUV out back, the keys are probably in the office,” Sam said. “See if you can find them, will you?”

George nodded and stepped through the doorway, while Nat and Sam turned to Steve. 

“I hate to say it, but James might be right,” said Natasha in a low voice. “We don’t know if we can trust him.”

“You didn’t see him with Snyder earlier,” said Sam. “There’s no way that was staged.”

“He’s keeping something back, but I don’t think he wants to hurt us,” Steve agreed. “He’s had plenty of opportunities before now.”

“All right,” Natasha gave in. “But we need to talk about what happens when we find the girl.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sam. “We save her.”

Nat shook her head. “Look, this Snyder guy, he’s gung-ho, and he wants Sofia to be his weapon. What if he’s been talking it up to her? What if he convinces her that HYDRA is the best path?”

“No,” Sam said firmly. “You don’t know her. She’d never believe that.”

“Don’t be naïve,” said Natasha. “You don’t know her, either. Not really.”

“We know her better than you do,” Steve countered.

“Guys,” said Natasha.

“No,” Steve overrode her. “We’re not having this discussion.”

“All I’m saying is that we should talk about what we’re gonna do if she turns against us,” Natasha tried. “We don’t know what we’re walking into, we need a plan.”

“We have a plan,” said Sam. “It’s called, save the kid.”

Natasha’s eyes looked from one of them to the other, and she sighed. “Okay,” she said finally. “We save the kid.”

“Thank you,” Steve said pointedly, while over Nat’s shoulder, George reappeared. 

“I found them,” he announced, holding up a set of car keys. “We ready to go?”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Let’s go.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No betas, we die like men.

“Police are reporting a major slowdown on Highway 6, so you may want to take an alternate route if you’re heading to the Interstate. No word on what’s causing the delay, or if there are any casualties, but callers claim there’s a vehicle on fire. We’ll keep you posted, Tim.”

“Thank you, Jill. In other news,” said the newsman, but Steve turned down the radio volume before he could find out what the other news was.

“How much further?” he asked.

“Five miles,” Natasha reported, her eyes focused on the display. 

Steve pressed a little harder on the gas pedal and tapped the communicator in his ear. “Buck?”

“Three firetrucks and an ambulance are blocking my view,” said Bucky, “but there’s soot on the pavement, and the van’s in the ditch.”

“Any sign of our targets?”

“None.”

Steve scowled. “All right, keep in touch.”

He disconnected and took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at Sam and George in the rearview mirror. Sam’s eyes found his in a second, but George was staring out the window, his daughter’s keychain clutched tight in his hand. Steve didn’t know what to say; there was nothing he could say — not one word he could tell him that would make it better. 

What had happened? Had Sofia lost control? Had Snyder coerced her into another threatening display of her powers? Or was she even still alive? Steve wished he knew. 

The minutes passed slowly, with only the steady beep from Natasha’s electronic gizmo to break up the tense silence in the car. Desperate for news, Steve turned the radio up the next time he heard people talking, but it was just an advertisement. He turned it back down. 

Finally, he saw a few houses on the horizon and a sign for reduced speed. He let up a little as another sign came into view — it announced the name of the town they were about to enter, and listed a three-digit population below. Steve wondered why they’d bothered with a sign, as they passed through it in seconds.

“Half a mile,” Natasha announced.

Ahead of him, Steve could now see the red and blue flashes of emergency vehicles, and a cluster of cars. It was probably the closest thing to a traffic jam that this tiny neighborhood had ever seen. 

Steve braked as he approached, and pulled onto the shoulder when he saw Natasha’s motorcycle. He activated the communicator again, but Bucky didn’t respond. 

“What happened?” asked George from the back seat. 

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Steve muttered. He and Sam exchanged a quick look, and Sam undid his seat belt. “Stay here,” Steve added to George and Natasha. “We’ll be back in a sec.”

A few drivers had wandered out of their cars and were craning their necks in an effort to see past the fire trucks and ambulances. “Oh, good,” one of them said to another when Steve came closer. “The deputies are here.”

Steve remembered suddenly that they’d arrived in a Sheriff’s Department vehicle and decided to roll with it. He straightened his spine and nodded to the rubberneckers as he and Sam passed. 

“Good thinking,” Sam said under his breath.

“Well, I’m more than just a pretty face, you know,” Steve replied.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam chuckled. 

“What do we got?” Steve asked the closest person in uniform — a woman with long blonde hair tied into a tight bun just above the nape of her neck. Her eyes were sharp, taking in Steve and Sam completely in a fraction of a second.

“Who are you?” she countered. 

“Deputy Rosewood, this is Deputy MacPherson, Ekfrid County Sheriff’s Department,” Sam said smoothly.

The officer didn’t look entirely convinced, so Steve added, “Sorry we’re not in uniform. Neither of us were on duty, but we heard the call. Thought we’d come down, see if we could help.”

She must have heard it — the _trust me I’m in charge_ tone, as Sam jokingly called it — because she backed off at once and even almost smiled. 

“Appreciate that,” she said, extending a hand to each of them in turn. “I’m Deputy Moretti. And, to answer your question, I have no idea what we’ve got.”

“An accident, though,” Sam observed. “Anybody hurt?”

“No,” Moretti replied. “In fact, nobody’s here at all.”

Steve frowned. “What do you mean?”

Moretti sighed and led them closer to the flipped, charred van in the ditch. “Looks like the van went off the road, caught fire, and the driver and all the passengers bailed.”

“How many were there?” Steve asked. 

“No idea,” said Moretti. “We’re still trying to sort that out. Got a witness over there who claims he saw six or seven, but I don’t know for sure. Also have no idea where they could have gone, or how they got away so fast. I mean—” she gestured at the flat expanse of plowed fields around them— “There’s not a lot of places to hide out here.”

Sam nodded. “And the fire started after the crash?”

“No,” said Moretti, shaking her head. “That’s another weird thing. Witness says the fire started first, then the crash, then the evacuation.”

Steve glanced over at the civilian witness she’d indicated. He was currently talking to a uniformed officer who looked familiar. 

_Bucky,_ Steve realized a second later, and he hoped to hell that he didn’t hurt the man whose uniform he’d stolen. 

“So, what can we do?” Steve asked, drawing Moretti’s attention away from Bucky, just in case she noticed that she didn’t recognize him.

“Honestly? Not much,” Moretti admitted. “We’ve got a lot of help already, but I imagine it’ll take hours to sort this out.” She sighed. “If I were you, I’d go back to being off-duty and pretend you never heard a thing.”

Sam chuckled. “Fair enough.”

“Thanks for coming, though,” Moretti added. She stepped abruptly into Steve’s space. “Next time I’m in Ekfrid I’ll be sure to look you up.”

“Uh,” said Steve, caught off-guard. Over Moretti’s shoulder, Sam looked like he was trying not to laugh. 

“Sure,” Steve told her. He shook her hand again and made a conscious effort not to pull back when she held on a little too long. “Good luck with the scene, Deputy Moretti.”

“Nice to meet you, Deputy MacPherson,” she all-but purred, and any doubts that Steve had about her intentions vanished. “Hopefully I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah,” Steve managed. “Yeah, um, thanks. Bye.”

He retreated as hastily as he could without looking like he was actually running. At his side, Sam was giving into his urge to laugh. 

“Wow,” he huffed. “I knew you were bad with women, but even I wasn’t expecting a train wreck.”

“She’s just so forward,” Steve muttered. His face, he knew, was beet red, so he kept it turned away from Sam. 

“And I’m not?” Sam countered. He stopped laughing enough to nod at the rubberneckers again as they passed them on the way back to the SUV. 

“You’re different,” Steve said. It wasn’t an argument, but it was all he had. 

“Yeah, yeah, just be glad I didn’t marry you for your game,” Sam chuckled.

Steve didn’t answer. He didn’t have time, and this wasn’t the place, to give voice to the complicated reaction that the m-word seemed to be having on the pit of his stomach lately.

They reached the SUV and found Natasha standing outside with her electronic device in her hand. “Got a new hit,” she reported, “but it’s on the move and going fast.”

“Snyder’s taking her somewhere,” Sam concluded.

“Looks that way,” Nat agreed. She opened the passenger door.

“What about Bucky?” Sam asked.

“He’ll catch up,” Nat replied.

Steve activated his communicator and gave Bucky a quiet update while he climbed back into the SUV and started the engine. 

He’d driven almost a mile before Bucky replied. His answer in Steve’s ear seemed to set off a chain reaction of events.

First, Bucky said, “Wait.”

Then, Natasha’s device started beeping, loud and erratic. “It’s coming here,” she cried.

Next: “What the—” exclaimed Sam from the backseat. There was a rustle, like he was turning to try and see something that had passed them by. 

And finally: “It’s her!” George shouted.

Steve pulled a sharp U-turn in time to see what looked like a fireball descend from the sky. It landed between the SUV and the accident scene, and Steve had enough time to hope that no civilians were going to wander over before there was a flash of orange— and then the steering wheel got very, very hot under his hands. 

“Everybody out!” Steve hollered, as smoke began to pour from the hood of the SUV.

The three superheroes congregated in front of the vehicle, Steve with his shield and Natasha her pistols. Steve stood half in front of Sam to protect him, as the fireball that had fallen from the sky glowed brighter, and then began to shrink. 

Steve looked away for one second to confirm that George was a safe distance behind them, and when he looked back, the fireball had become a woman. 

She was beautiful and terrifying, with rich dark hair that fell past her shoulders. Along her arms, like folded wings, a curtain of flame rippled — it was blue closest to the edge of her skin, and yellow orange beyond that. She was wearing a jumpsuit that reminded Steve of Natasha’s, except that it was a reddish orange, and she had no holsters or weapons to speak of. 

Well, Steve corrected himself a second later, she had some weapons. 

The woman raised her flaming fists and set her jaw. Her dark eyes glowed like dangerous embers. 

“I am only going to ask this once,” she said, quiet but clear. “Where is my daughter?”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder that I don't know how to science.
> 
> No beta, we die like men.

For the first time in a long time, Steve froze. 

The fiery woman’s — Bonita’s? — words told him that she wasn’t a threat, but her stance, the hard look in her eyes, the glow of her fists, it all set off alarms in his mind. Like her daughter, he thought, this woman was one of the most powerful people he’d ever encountered— except that Bonita very clearly knew how to use that power.

Steve caught Nat eyeing him from Sam’s other side, waiting to follow his lead, but he didn’t move. He wanted to lower his shield and throw it at the same time, and the conflicting messages in his brain meant he did nothing. 

He didn’t know how long he stood there, frozen. It felt like forever, but with his enhanced reflexes and all the adrenaline flooding his system, it was probably only a few seconds before the decision was taken out of his hands.

“Bonnie!” George’ s voice rang out from behind him. “Stop!”

Bonita lowered her hands, the fire at her fingertips abruptly dissipating. “George?”

_ “Sí,” _ said George. He pushed past Steve like he was furniture — a fair assessment, Steve thought dimly — and embraced his wife. 

“So... not shooting her, then,” said Bucky’s voice in Steve’s ear.

The world — the stopped cars, the gawking civilians with their phones out, the flirty deputy who was now re-holstering her weapon and staring at him over Bonita’s shoulder — came rushing back. 

“Yeah, stand down,” Steve said unnecessarily, as he deactivated his shield. 

Natasha put her guns away at once and began to circulate amongst the civilians, taking their phones. Moretti — the blonde deputy — protested, but Sam stepped forward. Steve left the three of them to smooth that over, and turned his attention back to their newest arrival. 

_ “No sé,”  _ George was saying, over and over. It sounded like his heart was breaking. 

Bonita caught Steve’s eye and laid a hand on George’s forearm. Both turned to him at once.

“I apologize,” Bonita said formally. “I thought you were an imposter.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve replied. “Thank you for coming, I’m sure we can use your help to find Sofia.”

Bonita nodded. “Tell him,” George urged her. “Tell him what you just told me.”

Bonita’s eyes darted around them, taking in the crowded scene. She spoke quietly and quickly. “I know what Snyder is after,” she explained. “He wants to steal Sofia’s powers. He has built a device based on very old SHIELD technology, something that Erskine only theorized.”

Steve felt his eyebrows jump up at the familiar name. He took a furtive look around and led Bonita and George away from the still-smoking vehicle, where they had more privacy and safety.

“What does the device do?” he asked, matching her tone.

“It is difficult to explain, but it copies biological powers,” she said. “It takes a blood sample and artificially recreates the whole from the part, like how red blood cells reproduce. This keeps the x factor alive, essentially creating an artificial body, a miniature copy of the powered individual, that can be carried on your person and used at will.”

“Carried on your person,” Steve repeated. He thought back to what Sam had told him, about how Snyder forced what looked like a necklace on Sofia. “Or worn around the neck?”

Bonita narrowed her eyes. “I suppose so. Why?”

“Would the person — the person with powers, I mean — would they have to use their abilities at the time that the blood is taken?” Steve asked, not answering her question.

“Yes,” said Bonita with certainty. “It takes a series of samples, when the powers are active and when they are not, and it uses these to build a viable copy.”

Steve looked over the roof of the vehicle and noticed that the crowd was dispersing. Sam, Bucky, and Natasha were talking with Deputy Moretti, but Sam turned and started walking, like he’d felt Steve’s eyes on him, before Steve could open his mouth to call him over. 

“What’s up?” he asked, when he’d reached them.

“Is it possible that the gas station bomb wasn’t on a timer?” Steve asked, wasting no time.

Sam frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you actually see Snyder set the bomb?”

“No,” said Sam. “Why?”

“Because I think it was a test,” he replied, and he explained what Bonita had just told him. 

“Yeah, that sounds like the device,” Sam said, when she described it to him. “And if her powers needed to be active in order to take a sample, it would make sense that he made her start a small fire that would eventually set off the charges and, hopefully, kill you when you came to find me.”

“Yeah, well, luckily I’m hard to kill,” Steve muttered. “So what more does he need to steal Sofia’s powers?” he asked Bonita worriedly.

But Bonita had a strange, light look on her face. She was almost smiling. “Fortunately, nothing. It won’t work.”

“Why not?” Steve asked slowly.

“Sofia’s powers are not biological.”

Steve and Sam exchanged a look. George cleared his throat. Steve remembered what he had said back at the station, his certainty that Sofia’s powers had not come from the SHIELD experiments in his past.

“You didn’t tell them?” Bonita asked her husband, when no one spoke. 

“You told me not to tell anyone,” said George, sounding a little defensive.

“They are on our side,” Bonita pointed out.

“I didn’t know that, and until five minutes ago, neither did you!”

The couple stared at each other for a beat, and then they both laughed. 

“You two are adorable,” said Natasha. Steve turned his head to find that she and Bucky had joined the group — silently, as usual. 

“So, if Sofia’s powers didn’t come from Steve’s blood,” said Sam, getting them back on track, “then I take it she got them from you.”

“In a way, yes,” Bonita confirmed. “It took some time for them to manifest, but—”

“How did you get your powers?” Bucky interrupted. At Sam’s look, he raised his eyebrows defensively. “What? I’m really curious.”

“More like really rude,” Sam said under his breath. 

“When Sofia was a baby,” Bonita said, ignoring them, “I took her to Mexico to meet her grandparents. We were on a walk outside the city, when a meteor crashed down in front of us. I tried to take shelter, but pieces of rock sprayed up, hitting me and Sofia. We were burned, but okay, I thought, until a few weeks later when I woke up on fire.”

“That sounds terrifying,” said Natasha.

“It was,” George answered shortly.

“I took a leave of absence from work,” Bonita went on. “Eventually, I learned to control it, and when I went back, SHIELD never knew.”

“Damn,” Sam said quietly. Natasha and Bucky were staring at Bonita, clearly impressed.

“But Fury found out,” said George in a low voice. “I don’t know how, but once he knew, he started giving Bonnie field assignments. He buried the paperwork, kept it all under wraps. But...”

He glanced at his wife, and Bonita took over. “It got too dangerous, once Jasper found out about Sofia. I wanted out, and we were working on an exit strategy when.... well.”

Steve nodded. Bucky, he noticed, was staring into the middle distance.

“That explains how George had everything he needed to set up a new life here so quickly after SHIELD collapsed,” said Sam. 

Steve nodded, thinking back to their early days of researching the history of the man they knew as Jacob Fortune. “But you didn’t join them,” he said to Bonita.

Bonita shook her head. “Fury needed me, needed people he could trust. Like you two, and Agent Romanov. We kept in touch, me and George and Sofia, but I was always on the move. And I— I think I made a mistake,” she broke off suddenly, tears filling her eyes. “I thought my family would be safe here, if I wasn’t with them. But I should have stayed, I didn’t know...”

“You couldn’t have,” Steve reassured her. “We are all blindsided.”

Bonita nodded, but she leaned on George for support. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and kissed her hair. 

“We can still fix this,” he told her. “We can stop Snyder, and get Sofia back.” He looked up at the group. “Right?” 

“Right,” said Sam firmly. 

“Bonita, this device he has, you said it wouldn’t do anything,” Steve said, thinking strategically. “Are you sure about that?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Bonita replied. “If the device works as it’s supposed to, nothing will happen. It can’t copy Sofia’s powers because they came from the radiation of the meteor. It’s not chemical or biological — it’s not like yours. There’s nothing in her blood to copy.” 

“But HYDRA doesn’t know that,” Bucky said suddenly. “Snyder thinks what we thought, that Sofia’s abilities came from the serum.”

“Exactly,” said Bonita. 

“So we have a window of opportunity,” Sam concluded, his eyes lighting up. “He’s vulnerable, but he doesn’t know it. If we hurry, we can find him and take him down before he figures it out.”

“How are we gonna do that?” Steve asked. 

“Well, I’ve still got the tracker,” Natasha offered.

“You said it tracks her heat signature, though,” Sam pointed out, “so unless she’s starting fires—”

“And if she is, it means she’s already his weapon,” Bucky said grimly.

“We can’t let that happen,” George said. He and Bonita were holding onto each other very tightly. “Cap, please—”

“Um, excuse me, superheroes?” said a new voice. Steve turned to find Deputy Moretti standing behind him. “This guy wanted to talk to you.”

She was holding the upper arm of a teenaged boy with stringy white hair and dark, downcast eyes. He was dressed all in black, and he seemed somewhat familiar to Steve. 

“Not your typical fanboy,” Bucky said under his breath.

“What’s up?” Sam asked the boy, but there was no response. “What did you want to talk to us about?” he tried again. 

“My dad,” the boy said, his eyes still on the ground. “I want to talk to you about my dad.”

Sam, baffled, glanced at Steve. Steve shrugged. “Who’s your dad?” he asked.

The boy raised his head. Steve got a good look at his face and answered his own question. 

“Don,” he said. The resemblance was uncanny, though Steve had a hard time imagining this distraught expression on Don’s face. “You were at the playground last night.” Steve thought back to the conversation between Don and George that he had overheard when he took Sofia home. “Travis, right? Sofia kicked you.”

Travis nodded. “I deserved it. I didn’t want to tease her so much, but Dad and his stupid ideology, he made me. I set fire to your house this summer, too,” he added to George. “I’m sorry.”

“We can talk about that later,” George replied quickly. “Your father’s with Snyder, isn’t he? He has Sofia, do you know where they are?”

“Yeah,” said Travis. “I can tell you, but you have to promise me something.”

He was speaking directly to Steve now, and Steve wondered what kind of immunity he might be seeking. “Okay,” he said, cautious.

“Promise me you’ll catch the bastards,” Travis said, with surprising intensity. “Lock them up, throw away the key, leave them to rot, whatever. They deserve all that and more. Promise me, you’ll burn all of HYDRA down.”

“Oh, honey,” said Bonita from Steve’s other side. “You can count on that.”


	15. Chapter 15

The sun was heading for the horizon when they came into town. Travis had given them specific directions before Steve insisted Natasha and Bucky take him somewhere safe, as he would be a target once his father and his associates found out he’d betrayed them.

“Whitehaven Shipping,” Sam read, as Steve turned down the side street, and the warehouse that Travis had described came into view. “That must be it. I honestly can’t think of a more HYDRA name for a HYDRA front.”

“Truer words,” George muttered from the backseat.

“What’s your plan, Captain?” Bonita asked. 

Steve took a moment to think before he answered, parking the car well out of sight of the warehouse’s security cameras. “Well, we know that Snyder’s tech won’t work, but he doesn’t. We have the advantage there, but the longer we wait, the more likely he is to discover it and take countermeasures. So, even though it sounds risky, I think we go in hot. Lure him out, let him think he’s got the upper hand, and take him down.”

Beside him, Sam was nodding. “Quick and dirty, just the way I like it,” he quipped. 

Steve shot him a quick grin, then looked back at George and Bonita. “You good with that?”

George looked uncertain, but when Bonita nodded, he did too. “Let’s do it.”

They exited the car and headed inside. The warehouse had obviously once been a factory. Large bolts and rusted spots on the floor showed the echo of old machinery. Now, it was filled with shelves that stretched almost all the way to the high ceiling. Each row was crammed with dusty boxes, their labels peeling and faded. 

The air was cool and damp, like the basement of an abandoned house. Once the door shut behind them, the only sound was the dull rhythm of their footsteps. 

“Sofia would say this is just like the Department of Mysteries,” George muttered.

Steve smiled faintly. “Yes, she would,” he agreed, thinking of the scene in question. He really hoped the kid was okay. 

He led them through the tight space, shield first. He kept Sam and George behind him, while Bonita brought up the rear. His eyes darted around, looking for any sign of Snyder or Sofia. It wasn’t a great space for a fight, but he’d been in worse.

They neared the far side of the building, which had a raised office and a catwalk over the entrance. In one of the small windows, he caught a flash of movement. A quick flare of heat from behind him told him that Bonita had seen it, too. 

He turned, locked eyes with Sam, and Sam nodded. He tugged George back while Bonita stepped forward — she was their heavy hitter, after all. 

“Now what?” she asked him quietly.

“Now we ring the doorbell,” Steve answered. 

He took careful aim and threw his shield at the window. One advantage of the hologram, there was no need to chase it to bring it back. It shattered the glass, then flickered and reappeared on his arm a second later. 

And it definitely caught Snyder’s attention. He stepped out onto the balcony at once, the necklace-like device worn tight against his throat. Sofia was nowhere in sight.

“Oh, look, guests,” he called jovially. Steve clenched his fists. 

“Where is she?” he asked.

“Now, I warned you,” Snyder said instead of answering the question. His Southern drawl dripped with condescension. “I told you to let me take the girl back home where she belongs.”

“She belongs with her family,” Bonita countered through gritted teeth. 

Steve caught a glimpse of something in the window behind Snyder — a small hand, raised and then lowered. He glanced back at Sam again, and he could tell that Sam saw it too. He gestured towards the office, miming his request. Sam nodded, then he and George snuck around the far side of the shelf and disappeared. 

“We  _ are _ family,” Snyder shot back. “Or we were. Thought I could trust you, Bonnie. Guess I know why the Feds nabbed our guys at the last dead drop.”

“Give me back my daughter,” Bonnie ordered him instead of engaging in his chosen topic of conversation.

“Oh well,” Snyder went on, with a world-weary sigh. “You know what they say. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I burn you all to death in a warehouse.”

He pressed on the device around his neck, a truly evil grin on his lips. Steve tensed, raised his shield just in case, but as Bonita had predicted, nothing happened. Snyder frowned slightly, raised his hands as if he expected fire to shoot from his fingertips. 

“Trouble performing?” Steve couldn’t help but joke. From the corner of his eye, he saw George and Sam edging along the outer wall, out of Snyder’s sight, towards the stairs to the catwalk. 

“I don’t understand,” he heard Snyder mutter, just as Sam put one foot on the bottom steps. 

Snyder glanced down like maybe he heard a sound, but Bonita rose into the air at that moment, drawing his eyes upwards. Sam took advantage of the distraction to climb a little higher. Soon, Snyder would have nowhere to go. 

“You thought you could steal my daughter’s powers?” Bonita asked, her voice thundering, her eyes blazing. “You thought you could take what God gave her?”

“God?” Snyder scoffed, but he was beginning to look and sound a bit like a cornered rat. “HYDRA gave her—”

“HYDRA gave her nothing,” Steve overrode him. He, on the ground, and Bonita, in the air, moved to the right, drawing Snyder further from the stairs. He wondered if Bonita could see Sofia in the window now, and he wanted to keep Snyder talking, to keep him distracted so Sam and George could assess her situation. 

“You think her powers came from me?” Steve went on. “You think the serum gave her the ability to burn things?”

“Not a chance,” Bonita answered for Snyder, drawing closer to the catwalk. Sam and George were almost at the top now. “My powers came from the heavens, and you could never hope to be worthy of them.”

Sam reached the top of the stairs at the exact moment that Snyder snarled and yanked a pistol out of his jacket. Bonita dove at him, and his shot missed, but he turned and saw Sam and George duck into the office behind him. He and Bonita struggled on the catwalk for a moment, and Steve ran and jumped, grabbing the lowest railing. He back-flipped up and landed on his feet behind Snyder. He hit him once in the lower back, causing him to cry out. Bonita capitalized on it and wrestled the gun away from him. The barrel went soft in her hand, and by the time it hit the ground, it was just a steaming grey-black puddle. 

“Steve!” shouted Sam from inside the office. Steve glanced at Bonita, but she was already nodding. 

“Go,” she said, grabbing Snyder’s wrist when he tried to punch her.

Snyder howled in pain, but Steve was already turning away, heading inside to see what Sam and George had found. 

“Oh no,” he said, when he saw it — a mess of wires binding Sofia to a bomb. The countdown clock told them they only had eight minutes until it went off. 

George was already working on it, detaching some wires carefully, untangling others. Sam, meanwhile, was tearing through the drawers on the desk, looking for something that Steve knew he wouldn’t find — a small silver detonator that he’s seen poking out of Snyder’s back pocket. 

“Cap?” said Sofia, her voice small and terrified. 

“Hold still, hang tight, we’re gonna get you outta this,” he reassured her, before crossing the room to tell Sam about the detonator. 

“Like a dead man’s switch,” Sam said under his breath, and Steve nodded.

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Keep working on the wires,” he instructed. He left the office again to find Bonita holding Snyder tightly by the shoulders. His clothes were singed, shiny burns peppering his exposed flesh, but he was grinning. 

“Figured it out, didn’t you, Captain?” he gloated. 

“How do we disarm it?” Steve demanded. 

Snyder shrugged. Bonita glanced through the window and saw the bomb. “No,” she cried, distraught, and her grip slackened just enough for Snyder to wriggle free. 

In a split second, he had the detonator out of his pocket, and he brandished it like a weapon when Steve made to step forward. 

“Here’s what’s about to happen,” Snyder told him. “You’re going to let me and the kid walk out of here. Six minutes is plenty of time to get to a vehicle. Once we’re on our way, I shut off the countdown clock, and you let us disappear.”

“Deactivate the bomb, and we let you go,” Bonita counter-offered. “Leave her.”

“I don’t think so,” Snyder replied, shaking his head. “She’s coming with me.”

“Your little machine can’t copy her powers,” Steve reminded him. “What do you even want her for?”

Snyder raised his eyebrows. “Well, I thought that would’ve been obvious by now, but okay. Let me give you a hint: rhymes with Splinter Boulder.”

Steve’s blood ran cold. The image of Sofia, tortured like Bucky was, forced to do HYDRA’s bidding, to be their weapon, flashed in front of his eyes.

“This girl is an asset,” Snyder said. “And I already knew this thing wouldn’t work,” he added, tugging the device off his neck and tossing it over the railing. It clattered into pieces on the cement below. “You think I didn’t test it before you got here? I just needed to draw your attention with one hand so I could start the countdown with the other. And if I push this button right here—”

He raised his thumb, but froze when Bonita shouted, “No!”

“Take her,” she said quickly. Steve looked at her with wide eyes, but her gaze was fixed on Snyder. “Now. Go. You win.”

Snyder smiled. “HYDRA always does, darling,” he drawled. 

He stepped through the office door and re-emerged a moment later holding Sofia by the arm. The countdown clock was still running — less than five minutes were left — and Sofia was crying.

“Say goodbye now,” he told her, and he shook her slightly when she didn’t speak.

“Goodbye,” she choked after a moment, and Snyder nodded in approval. 

“Keep following orders like that, and you’re gonna fit in just fine,” he said. 

He paused in front of Steve, and curled his lip, taunting. Steve set his jaw and raised his shield, but Bonita caught his eye and shook her head. She knew something he didn’t, he realized. She had a plan. He backed down and forced himself to stay still as Snyder led Sofia away. 

“What’s the play?” he asked her in a whisper, once they were out of earshot.

Bonita didn’t answer. Instead, she watched her daughter leave in Snyder’s grip, and when the door closed behind them, she sprouted her flame-wings and took off, slipping out one of the warehouse’s high, open windows. 

“The bomb’s deactivated,” George announced, coming out of the office. “Even if he detonates it, nothing’s gonna happen. Sofia’s safe for now, and she knows it.”

“We left the clock running though, so Snyder wouldn’t suspect,” Sam added. 

“Good thinking,” said Steve. He tapped the communicator in his ear. “Buck? Tasha? Look alive, we need—”

A screeching crash from outside cut him off. He, George and Sam shared a startled look, then hurried down the stairs and out into the sunlight. 

The SUV that they’d driven here in was in the middle of the street. Its nose was crumpled, having collided with a black van that looked none the worse for wear. 

The back door of the van opened, and five men with guns poured out, surrounding Snyder’s vehicle. And stepping out of the driver’s seat was— 

“Fury,” George said beside him. Steve couldn’t tell if he was relieved or resigned.

The director was wearing his trademark trenchcoat, eyepatch, and scowl. He didn’t blink when Bonita dropped out of the sky to land at his side, and when his men had extracted Snyder, she rushed forward to help her daughter out of the car. George ran to her as well, and they embraced Sofia tightly, the countdown clock squeezed painfully between them. 

Steve allowed himself to breathe out, deactivate his shield, and let some of the tension out of his shoulders. It was over.

“Well, this feels kinda familiar,” Sam said in a low voice. 

“Sure does,” Steve agreed. “And here I thought we were getting out of this life.”

Sam hummed thoughtfully. His arm settled around Steve’s waist. “This whole Rob and Marcus thing has been fun,” he said, “but, to be honest, I think I missed this.”

“Me too,” said Steve, as much as he didn’t want to admit it. “Maybe it’s time we get back in the game.”

“May as well,” Sam said. “We blew our cover anyway.”

Steve nodded, but he hesitated before he spoke. “Sam, we can start again, if you— we can stay out of it.”

“I literally just told you that I missed this,” Sam pointed out, pulling away to cross his arms over his chest. “When are you gonna start listening to me and stop listening to that crazy martyr complex of yours?”

Steve blinked, taken aback. “I— Sam, I just don’t want you to regret it.”

To his surprise, Sam smiled and shook his head. “Haven’t yet,” he said, and he leaned in to kiss him. 


	16. Epilogue

Three weeks after the showdown at the warehouse, Steve found himself on the back deck of the farmhouse. It was one of those almost-warm days that felt like early spring instead of fall. The sun was sinking quickly, though, and he hurried to get the burgers off the barbecue before it got too cold. This would be the last cook-out of the year, and probably the last for a long time, as the sale of the house was being finalized next week and most of their things were already packed. 

They would be leaving soon. HYDRA was on the run again, with Snyder in prison and Don on the lam. Travis was in protective custody for now, but he’d be relocated with a new identity before the end of the year. Fury had faded back into the shadows, but he’d smiled when Steve re-enlisted, and he’d given them everything they needed to get back in the fight.

Steve flipped the meat and pressed it down into the griddle, watching the pink juices run out and spark up the flame underneath. Not quite done yet. He closed the lid and turned around, looking out at the square yard that was hedged by rows of dark tilled earth. The corn, thankfully, had been harvested a few days ago, and Steve breathed easier. 

On the other side of the patio door, he heard the crash of breaking glass. He whirled around, but the people inside were already laughing, so there was no cause for panic. He watched Sam’s form pass in front of the door and return a second later with the broom. He raised a hand to wave, but Sam didn’t see him. 

A sizzle caught his attention, and he opened the barbecue again. “That looks better,” he said out loud. He reached for the buns and placed them, one by one, on the top rack. 

The breeze kicked up behind him and blew the empty plastic bag away. He dove and twisted and snatched at it with his superhuman reflexes, and managed to grab it before it got too far. He smiled, pleased, and tucked it into his pocket. 

Soon, he’d be using his powers for a lot more than barbecuing, but in the meantime it was a fun little chance to show off — especially because Sam was looking at him now. 

Sam slid open the door a few inches and stuck his head out. “You cooking or dancing out there?” he asked. “Because the rest of us are getting hungry.”

“Almost done,” Steve reassured him. 

“Good,” said Sam. He gave an exaggerated shiver. “It’s cold out here.”

“You just really want to get to Costa Rica,” Steve teased him. 

“Damn right I do,” Sam replied, and shut the door. 

The mission parameters were simple enough, and Steve had a good team. The best, actually, thanks to Natasha, who was not only able to find a superpowered tutor for Sofia, but also managed to convince Fury to pay for it. Steve was looking forward to being in the field again, and he couldn’t wait to get started. 

There was just one thing he had to do first. 

He shut off the barbecue once the burgers were finished and hurried to get them and the buns onto a plate. He loaded up his arms, then realized he didn’t leave himself a free hand to open the door. 

Luckily, Bonita was there in a pinch. “Thank you,” he said sincerely, stepping through. 

“You’re welcome,” Bonita replied, sliding the patio door shut behind him. She glanced around furtively and dropped her voice. “Are you ready?”

Steve swallowed hard, but he nodded. “I think so,” he answered. “You brought the... cookies?”

“I did,” she said, and Steve knew she had brought the other thing, too. 

Steve opened his mouth to thank her again, but Sam chose that moment to walk up to him. “Finally,” he said, taking the plate of burgers. “Come on, wash up so we can eat before it gets cold.”

“Yessir,” Steve replied, only half-teasing. Sam grinned, but didn’t comment. 

Dinner was a raucous affair, partly due to the two bottles of wine that Bucky had brought, and partly because there were just so many of them, and they all had so much to say. Sofia told Natasha the story of how she fought off the bullies — since Nat was the only person at the table who hadn’t heard it three times by now — while George and Bucky compared notes on their favorite weapons. Beside him, Bonita was teaching Sam her tamales recipe, but she refused to tell him the secret ingredient, even though he made a guess with every bite he took. 

Steve grinned and ate and drank, watching them talk, chiming in when he had something to add, but otherwise just enjoying their company. They were a team now, the best team, but they were more than that. They spoke like friends, shared like family. 

And when their plates were finally clear, Natasha sent him a look, and they got to their feet together. Refusing Sam’s offer to help, Bonita rose too, and the three of them cleared the table and got set for dessert. Bonita arranged the cookies on a platter, six in a circle, with Sam’s in the middle. 

“Everybody’s been briefed,” Nat reported in a hushed tone. “They all know which one is his. They know not to touch it.”

“Okay, thanks,” said Steve. 

Bonita patted him on the shoulder. “Champagne’s in the bucket on the deck,” she reminded him. 

Steve nodded and swallowed down his nerves as the two women headed back to the table. He watched Bonita place one cookie on Steve’s plate, then one on her own, and sent it down the line. Sofia stifled a giggle by biting into hers right away. George and Natasha made a valiant effort to keep up normal conversation when they took theirs, but Bucky looked nervous as he took the second last cookie. That, ironically, made Steve feel better, and he stepped up to the table as Sam took the plate.

“What—?” Sam said, when he lifted the cookie to find the ring underneath. 

He turned, saw Steve lowering himself to one knee. He stared, and Steve’s cheeks went warm. His heart was skipping in his chest, but he said the words he’d memorized.

“I know it might feel like we already did this,” Steve began. “But when we got married, it was just a piece of paper with somebody else’s name on it. That’s how it started, anyway. But doing this with you, Sam, having this life, this mission together — it made me realize that I want it for real. I can’t imagine doing this without you, actually. I can’t imagine a single day without you. So.” 

He broke off, cleared his throat, because the look in Sam’s eyes had his mouth going dry. He’d probably forgotten a few words of his speech, but he remembered the important part. 

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” said Sam, without a moment’s hesitation.

He got up from his chair and hauled Steve to his feet while everyone at the table burst into applause. Bucky cheered, and George gave Sofia a high-five. Bonita was filming on her phone, and Natasha was blinking her suspiciously shiny eyes.

As Sam pulled him close and kissed him, Steve felt something deep within him finally settle.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're also practicing social distancing, and you're bored, you can connect with me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mrsd_writes), [Tumblr](http://mrsd-writes.tumblr.com), and [Dreamwidth](https://mrs-d.dreamwidth.org/). 
> 
> Stay home, wash your hands and stay safe, friends. <3


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